Werner Klemke (1917-1994), Muse With Radio, 1969

Werner Klemke (1917 Weißensee - 1994 Berlin), Muse with Radio, 1969. Wood engraving on Japanese paper. 17.5 cm x 8 cm (image), 23.5 cm x 12.5 cm (sheet size), with signed and dated dedication in pencil and artist's stamp
- mounted, minimally light-stained, otherwise in excellent condition  



- Modern twitter -


Kalliope, the muse of poetry, is sitting on a park bench in an Arcadian landscape. But instead of reading the book she is holding in her hand, she is listening to the radio, holding the transistor radio directly to her ear so that she is completely absorbed by the sounds and no longer notices the book. The irony of the antique motif is heightened by the chirping of birds, which also cannot compete with the music coming from the radio. Klemke uses "sacred" motifs from art history in order to turn them into irony through a reference to the present and thus ironize his own time.    



About the artist


Walter Klemke, who initially worked as a cartoonist, was interned in East Frisia near Norden after the Second World War, where he had the opportunity to learn the technique of lithography. In the summer of 1945, Klemke designed the Bremen Town Musicians, the first children's book to be published after the war. After returning to Berlin in 1946, he produced illustrations for various magazines. His first major commission, the more than one hundred woodcut illustrations for Georg Weerth's 'Humoristische Skizzen', published by Volk und Welt in 1948, led to his artistic breakthrough and a never-ending series of commissions. In addition to his other artistic activities, Klemke illustrated well over 800 book titles. For his graphic work, he revived the almost forgotten technique of wood engraving, in which the hard, cross-cut end grain serves as a printing plate. In 1951 Klemke became a lecturer at the Hochschule für Bildende und Angewandte Kunst in Weißensee, where he was appointed professor of book graphics and typography in 1956. A trip to China in 1954 led to an interest in Chinese woodblock prints. In 1956 Klemke co-founded the bibliophile Pirckheimer Society, for which he designed the logo. A member of the Akademie der Künste since 1961, Klemke became its secretary in 1964 and had to take on more and more bureaucratic tasks, which limited his artistic work. A large number of solo exhibitions were dedicated to Werner Klemke, and he was involved in numerous important group exhibitions; his works were shown from the Third German Art Exhibition in 1953 to the Xth Biennale in Venice in 1959.