Author Description

The elusive Swiss artist Klaus Born is so protective of his privacy that he has never allowed any of the galleries mounting exhibitions of his work to produce catalogs or comment on his art. Now, Born's abstract canvases, luminous in their palettes and breathtaking in their violent linearity, can be seen for the first time in print. Klaus Born--Malerei records Born's life and work of the past twenty-five years with abundant color illustrations and essays by scholars Guido Magnaguagno and Sibylle Omlin. Born came late to painting in 1972 after years as a teacher and bookseller. Magnaguagno and Omlin trace his career from his first, realistic drawings, brimming with aggressive force, to his later large-scale abstract work, which revolutionized the use of line in painting. In his inimitable "artist's books," also represented here, Born painted over already-printed texts with his signature brushstrokes. This stunning retrospective of Born's work will be crucial reading for anyone interested in European art and abstract painting.