Karl Kueffel

Karl Kueffel was born on January 2, 1963 in Weissenborn, Hessen, Germany. His artistic vision was shaped from childhood, when he studied under Prof. Heinz Lembke-Rousseau and Jürgen Blum, private art teachers at Rittershain Castle near Koenigswald. From 1971 to 1979 he continued his studies with Blum at the Monastery Cornberg Station, where he developed his first approach to abstract painting. After this foundational training he developed a distinct style of painting and quickly established himself as a newcomer, combining traditional artistic aesthetics with contemporary elements through high-quality technology.

Kueffel held his first major exhibition at Gallery Bauknecht, Munich, in 1991, and has since shown at Gallery Differente in Hamburg, Gallery Perling in Krefeld, the Morsum Huese Cultural Center on Sylt and Gallery Siejes Saeule in Berlin. In 2000 he presented Labyrinth of Passion at the main church in Thüringen and made a series of paintings for the Ambient art fair in Frankfurt am Main. His 2001 solo exhibition Old Berlin - New Berlin at the Victory Column in Berlin was produced in collaboration with Dr. Dieter Vorsteher, Deputy Director of the German Historical Museum. He was represented at the Kunstmesse art fair in Salzburg, Austria, in 2003. A further solo exhibition, Film and Society 100 Years, took place in 2004 at the Zeughaus of the German Historical Museum in Berlin, followed by an exhibition at the Film Museum in München in 2005.

Surrealism and psychic automatism are the central theme of Kueffel's past and present work. His art reflects the influence of Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Jackson Pollock, Yves Tanguy, Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall, with Miró, Dalí and Pollock dominant in his current paintings. His 1985 paintings from the Festival of Art at Cornberg Monastery are Abstract Expressionist in mood, with fiery red and yellow slashes of paint over a dark abyss and ghostly faces drawn into wet paint. The series Tribute to the Legacy of Joan Miro, watercolors, mixed media and lithographs completed between 1996 and 1997, takes Miró's imagery as a point of departure: where Miró left vast abstract negative space with figures isolated at the margin, Kueffel fills the central pictorial space with humorous biomorphic creatures, cosmic moons and stars and whimsical faces, combined with gestural drip lines inspired by Pollock and compositions that occasionally recall Kandinsky's Bauhaus abstractions. The critic Robert P. Metzger has described these works as more than a reverential tribute, standing on their own as singular statements that both append and augment their source.

Kueffel's Children of the World photo and painting project of 2006 reflects his humanitarian concern for children who have suffered war, poverty and persecution, and the Miró tribute pictures were to accompany him to Nicaragua for a project encouraging underprivileged children to express their experiences, dreams and goals through art. In 2011 he set up a second home and studio in Cape Coral, Florida, where bright sunlight and warm weather brought a brighter palette to his Fantasy series, with Miró-inspired yellows, blues and reds and playful Pollock-like dripped lines out of which spontaneous imagery emerges. His State of Dreams paintings of 2012 use Dalí's landscapes as a starting point, distorting them by computer and meticulously re-rendering them by hand into abstract, labyrinthine compositions in which small figures try, and fail, to make contact.

Kueffel currently divides his time between Tenerife, Spain, and Berlin, Germany. His paintings are held in private and public collections, including the permanent collection of the German Historical Museum in Berlin, Weimar Europas Kulturhauptstadt in Thüringen and the Goethe Institute in New York. His work has been reviewed by the historian and art critic Prof. Dr. Hanns Theodor Flemming and published in Die Welt.