Klaus Jurgeit

(1937–2017)

Born and raised in Berlin, Klaus Jurgeit remained closely connected to the city throughout his life and painted his city in three fantastic series of works – Berlin Backyards, Berlin Rooms and Punks. In the early 1980s, Jurgeit began to paint Berlin interiors in watercolour on paper, rooms, often in squats, sometimes depicting their residents. The pictures are compositionally convincing and with an astonishing attention to detail, he has finely and precisely painted the entire interior (visible from a particular angle). Some of the works are veritable hidden object pictures and there are always new discoveries to be made when looking at them. At the same time – until the 1990s – Jurgeit also painted backyards in Berlin, and just as with the rooms, addresses can usually be found on the backs of the pictures. These are sometimes desolate places that suddenly become subjects worthy of depiction and contemplation thanks to the loving depiction. The works in both series are, without exception, independent works of art and at the same time documents of the times – images of a bygone era, but at the time of their creation completely unsentimental, friendly but matter-of-fact. Today they evoke melancholy.

A third series comprises pictures of punks that Jurgeit met on the streets of Berlin and asked to be portrayed by him – they too bear witness to a bygone era.

Vita:

In the 1950s, Klaus Jurgeit trained as a cinematographer and at the same time took drawing lessons with Prof. W. Tank, J. Kluska and Prof. L. Boehland. He worked as a cinema painter until 1967, after which he worked in a studio for decoration, where he was involved, among other things, in painting the ‘Pop’ buses of the BVG. From 1975-1976 he was a stage painter in the Schiller Theatre’s set design workshop and in the film studio on Havelchaussee, and from 1976 he worked for the Berlin Union-Film GmbH & Co. Studio KG, where he was involved in productions for ARD and ZDF as well as independent feature film productions.

Exhibitions: 1976 Galerie Das Bild, Berlin (with Klaus Keitel); 1977 Atelier JAS, Berlin (with Heinz Otterson); 1977 Foyer of the Bristol Hotel Kempinski, Berlin; since 1976 involved in group exhibitions of the FBK; since 1977 involved in exhibitions of the Arbeitsgruppe Berliner Architekturmaler, 1978 and 1983 in the restaurant Kleine Orangerie at Schloss Charlottenburg; 1980 in the Bundeskartellamt and the Berlin Museum; 1984, 1988, 2002, 2007, 2014 Galerie Taube Berlin.