Klaus Jurgeit – Rooms, Courtyards and Punks

Images of the Berlin Eighties

Exhibition: 26 January – 3 March 2024

Opening: 26 March, 7 pm

Born and raised in Berlin, Klaus Jurgeit (1937–2017) remained closely connected to the city throughout his life and painted it in several fantastic series – among them the Berliner Hinterhöfe, Zimmer (and Punks).

In the early 1980s, Jurgeit began to paint Berlin interiors in watercolour on paper – rooms, often in squatted houses, sometimes also depicting their residents, who were sitting in their rooms. The pictures are compositionally convincing, excellent from an artistic standpoint, and with an astonishing attention to detail he has painted the entire interior with finesse and precision. Some of the works are veritable hidden object pictures, and there are always new discoveries to be made when looking at them.

In the same period – up until the 1990s – Jurgeit also painted backyards in Berlin. These are sometimes desolate places that, through painting them meticulously, suddenly become subjects worth depicting and contemplating. The paintings in both series are independent works of art and at the same time documents of the time – images of a bygone era.

A third series comprises portraits of punks whom Jurgeit met on the streets of Berlin and whom he asked to let him paint them.