Lot 493 D

Karin Kneffel's art is fascinating and irritating at the same time. In her early animal portraits the viewer comes face-to-face with farm animals and their meaningful glances, and in her famous fruit paintings the borderline between a portrait and a still life is blurred: “[T]he fruit still life, which occupies rather a low position in the ranking of artistic genres, has been reinterpreted and indeed specially elevated by the artist for about ten years. Painted in extreme close-ups and with a larger-than-life presence, her grapes, peaches and other fruits have a monumental quality and therefore significance. Kneffel renders the beauty of their impeccable ripeness with an amazing realism, and the precision of her brushstroke is reminiscent of old masters, skilfully rendering even the most delicate nuances of light. The artificial yet sensuous smoothness of her paintings is seductive yet distant - a feature that gives them a certain kinship to the high-gloss photos of advertising. Her concentration on intact and therefore self-contained form also means abstraction. What makes the motif of 'beauty' so effective - a motif that is really banal - is her level of precision and her own system of laws.” (Brigitte Reinhardt, Mut zur Schönheit, Zu den Interieurs von Karin Kneffel, in: Brigitte Reinhardt and Andrea Firmenich (eds.), Karin Kneffel, Verführung und Distanz, Seduction and Distance, exh.cat., Ulmer Museum, Ulm, ALTANA Kulturforum, Bad Homburg, Mönchehaus-Museum für Moderne Kunst, Goslar, 2006)