Konrad Klapheck The Squared Circle
October 26 - November 27, 2013
Main Gallery
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Konrad Klapheck
Drawing for “Jazzclub, 52nd Street”
2005
charcoal and red pencil on tracing paper
45 1/4 x 33 1/2 inches (115 x 85 cm)
Konrad Klapheck
Drawing for “Loverman”
2009
charcoal and pencil on tracing paper
60 1/4 x 45 1/4 inches (153 x 115 cm)
Konrad Klapheck
Drawing for “Nightclub”
2005
charcoal and pencil on tracing paper
59 x 37 inches (150 x 94 cm)
Konrad Klapheck
Archie Shepp
2005
charcoal on Ingres paper
25 x 19 1/4 inches
Konrad Klapheck
Illinois Jacquet
2000
charcoal on Ingres paper
25 x 19 1/4 inches
Konrad Klapheck
Elvin Jones
2000
charcoal on Ingres paper
25 x 19 1/4 inches (63.3 x 48.6 cm)
Konrad Klapheck
Rashied Ali
2000
charcoal on Ingres paper
25 x 19 1/4 inches (63.3 x 48.6 cm)
Konrad Klapheck
Sketch for “Four Horns, One Mouth” I
2008
graphite and red pencil on paper
11 5/8 x 6 inches
Konrad Klapheck
Sketch for “Four Horns, One Mouth” II
2008
graphite and red pencil on paper
11 1/2 x 6 inches (29.5 x 15 cm)
Konrad Klapheck
Sketch for “Tomorrow is the Question” (Ornette Coleman)
2012
graphite and red pencil on paper
11 5/8 x 8 1/4 inches (27.7 x 21 cm)
Konrad Klapheck
Sketch for “Galactic Blues” (Sun Ra)
2011
graphite and red pencil on paper
11 5/8 x 8 1/4 inches (27.7 x 21 cm)
Konrad Klapheck
Sketch for “Solo” (Anthony Braxton)
2010
graphite and red pencil on folded paper
11 5/8 x 8 1/4 inches (27.7 x 21 cm)
Konrad Klapheck
Sketch for “Initiation”
2008
charcoal on paper
11 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches (29.5 x 21 cm)
Konrad Klapheck
Sketch for “The Audience”
2008
graphite on paper
11 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches (29.5 x 21 cm)
Konrad Klapheck
Sketch for “Jazzclub, 52nd Street”
2005
graphite on paper
11 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches (29.5 x 21 cm)
Konrad Klapheck
Sketch for “Ballroom” I
2004
graphite and red pencil on paper
11 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches (29.5 x 21 cm)
Konrad Klapheck
Sketch for “Ballroom” II
2004
graphite on paper
11 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches (29.5 x 21 cm)
Konrad Klapheck
Ballroom
2010
engraving on paper
11 3/4 x 9 1/2 inches (plate); 21 x 15 1/2 inches (sheet) (53 x 39 cm)
Ed. of 30
Konrad Klapheck
Nude study for “Le ring I”
2000
charcoal on Ingres paper
25 x 19 1/4 inches (63.3 x 48.6 cm)
Konrad Klapheck
Le Ring
2010
engraving on ivory paper
13 1/2 x 10 3/4 inches (plate); 20 7/8 x 15 3/8 inches (sheet) (50 x 39 sm)
Ed. of 30
Konrad Klapheck
Round About Midnight
2010
engraving with black marker and white ink on white paper
10 1/2 x 8 inches (plate); 19 11/16 x 15 31/2 inches (sheet) (50 x 39 cm)
Ed. of 30
Press Release
Opening reception at the gallery on Saturday, October 26, from 5:00–8:00pm.
Since he emerged in the mid 1950s, Konrad Klapheck has been one of the legendary figures of European painting. His early signature works were canvases of machines – sewing machines, watches, adding machines, motorcycyles, and most importantly typewriters. Under Klapheck’s brush, a typewriter carried a great variety of connotations and associations. Using his own patented perspectival system, he endowed them with personality, gender, a sense of menace or seductiveness. In the ’60s and ’70s, these machines grew more complex and fantastic, but they retained their inherent objectness, their fetishistic quality as still images of metallic beasts. Klapheck began to introduce figures into his work in the 1990s, and these, too, were unlike anything else in contemporary painting. Narrative tableaux, often explicitly erotic and even disturbing, they made clear a side of the work that had always been latent in the anthropomorphic machines. At the same time, the figurative works allowed Klapheck to return to two earlier loves: boxing and jazz. In the early ’50s, he had worked as a jazz journalist in Düsseldorf, and the new works included portraits of Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, and Coleman Hawkins, as well as avant garde jazz figures including Archie Shepp, Anthony Braxton, and Ornette Coleman.
Klapheck’s work has been shown infrequently in the United States, most recently at Zwirner & Wirth (2007) in an exhibition curated by artist Christopher Williams. In this, Klapheck’s first exhibition in Chicago, Corbett vs. Dempsey is proud to present a selection of jazz and boxing drawings and prints by one of the most profound and enigmatic artists of the last 60 years.