Klaus Peter Brehmer biography

Klaus Peter Brehmer was a German painter, graphic designer and director. From 1971 to 1997 he was also a professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. Through his art, Klaus Peter Brehmer expressed his political tendencies and his social and civil commitment. He was born in Berlin on 12 September 1938. He graduated as an engraver at the end of the 1950s. In the following years he studied graphics at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he worked for several years until 1963.
After a year of residence in Paris at the studio of Stanley William Hayter , returns to Berlin and dedicates himself to various types of graphics. In this period his folded graphics, stamp series and cinematographic works were produced.
Influenced by Pop Art and the political rebellion of the young generations of the 60s, Klaus Peter Brehmer will elaborate a new form of artistic language that will give greater emphasis on material objects such as architectural elements or other objects of daily life. Thus, around 1963, the so-called banal graphics were born in which everyday motifs from advertising and the mass media were depicted, such as naked women, cars or astronauts.
In the mid-1960s 60, Brehmer begins to reproduce in his prints the stamp, which the artist himself defines as an authoritative organism with a cultural definition of power. Starting from the mid-1960s, the artist became, together with Konrad Lueg, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter and Wolf Vostell, an important representative of capitalist realism.
In the 1970s, Brehmer developed a new group of works, the so-called schematic work, in which colors, maps and statistics were developed. In these works, he deals with the interpretation and meaning of color as a symbol (Farbengeografien, Ideale Landschaft, Farbmuster) and created large charts and maps to represent fascism (Hitler's Rede, 1973), the communist threat (Lokalisierung von Rotwerten, 1972), environmental damage (Skyline).
In the last twenty-five years of his life he dedicated himself to teaching. In particular, from 1971 to 1997 he was a professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg, one of the cities that adopted him during his career. Furthermore, in 1987 and 1988 he was a teacher at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, another experience that allowed him to make himself known internationally.
Klaus Peter Brehmer died in Hamburg in 1997.