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until 20.11. | #4831ARTatBerlin | Semjon Contemporary shows from Thursday, 16. October 2025 the exhibition “Freiheit im Malen” by the artist Klaus Steinmann.
Klaus Steinmann, born in Darmstadt in 1939, can look back on a long artistic career. As a young man, he had the opportunity to experience the legendary exhibition The New American Painting 1959, which toured Europe and was also shown at the Berlin University of the Arts on Steinplatz – and it made a deep impression on him.
So much so that he never allowed himself to be completely caught up in the disputes and infighting in and around concrete art. Klaus Steinmann went his own way. Constructive art as a tool, yes, but enriched by the (visual) experience of American minimal art and colour field painting. The basic shapes of the rectangle, circle and triangle have accompanied him throughout his artistic life and continue to do so today.
Placing these shapes in tension with the multifaceted image background has allowed him to create a very differentiated and rich oeuvre.
Klaus Steinmann, O.T. (SC-096), 2024, 30,5 x 33,6 cm,
dispersion paint and graphite on fabric on wood, Photo: Eric Tschernow
From the late 1980s onwards, he added a painterly-sculptural ally: the shadow. By partially sawing through the mostly small-format plywood panels covered with fabric as a painting surface, folding forward or stepping back from partial forms, he creates an astonishing puzzle of front and back, allowing the shadow to break up the strict geometry of the painted forms and breathe delicate modulation into them.
Since last year, he has been radicalising the idea of relief and using the drawn line as its counterpart. At times, it is no longer clear whether the detail is plastic in nature or simply a drawing, a real spatial gradation or a trompe l’oeil (‘trompe graphite’).
According to Steinmann, white is the colour of freedom. But it is useless. Designing it is the great challenge.
In his daily studio practice, whether in Walsrode or in his Berlin studio, the artist creates his own space of freedom. Freedom makes you happy when you can shape it creatively, use it creatively.
Klaus Steinmann feels it every day in his work, and his joy in it is immeasurable. It is his life. Freedom in painting!
Semjon H. N. Semjon
October 2025
*The fact that the painter Klaus Steinmann is also a convincing sculptor can be seen in his wall and
hanging objects, which he repeatedly creates to accompany his paintings. Three of these are also on display.
Opening: Thursday, 16. October 2025, 7-9:20 pm.
Exhibition dates: Thursday, 16. October 2025 until Thursday, 20. November 2025
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Title image caption: Klaus Steinmann, O.T. (SC-096), 2024, 30,5 x 33,6 cm, dispersion paint and graphite on fabric on wood, Photo: Eric Tschernow.
Exhibition Klaus Steinmann – Semjon Contemporary | Zeitgenössische Kunst | Contemporary Art | Ausstellungen Berlin Galerien – ART at Berlin
