Picture "PolarBear_56" (2023) (Unique piece)
Picture "PolarBear_56" (2023) (Unique piece)
Quick info
unique piece | signed | mixed media on canvas | framed | size 33.5 x 43.5 cm
Detailed description
Picture "PolarBear_56" (2023) (Unique piece)
Mixed media on canvas, 2023. Signed on the back. Size in frame 33.5 x 43.5 cm as shown.
About Ralf Koenemann
Ralf Koenemann, born in Essen, Germany in 1961, explores the border between figuration and gestural abstraction in his powerful animal and landscape paintings.
The artist not only uses acrylic paint but also experiments with bitumen, spar varnish and concrete paints, sometimes mixing ash and other materials into his colours, creating haptic surfaces that lend his motifs a very unique liveliness.
Since the late 1980s, Koenemann has chosen the animal as the central theme of his painterly narrative. In various modes of representation, the artist makes animals such as polar bears, elephants, Tasmanian tigers, buffaloes, gorillas, rhinos and many more the protagonists of his paintings. Koenemann always presents them to the viewer in a close-up shot, so that the viewer seems to get particularly close to the creatures.
Furthermore, visualises the painter the tense relationship between animals and humans. This ambivalence takes on a new meaning in the context of global climate change and its consequences for humans and wildlife.
Ralf Koenemann lives and works in Essen and is regularly represented with his works in national and international exhibitions and various private collections.
Graphic artwork in the making of which the artist combines at least two graphic techniques.
A one-of-a-kind or unique piece is a work of art that has been personally created by the artist. It exists only once due to the type of production (oil painting, watercolours, drawing, etc.).
In addition to the classic unique pieces, there exist the so-called "serial unique pieces". They present a series of works with the same colour, motif and technique, manually prepared by the same artist. The serial unique pieces are rooted in "serial art", a type of modern art, that aims to create an aesthetic effect through series, repetitions and variations of the same objects or themes or a system of constant and variable elements or principles.
In the history of arts, the starting point of this trend was the work "Les Meules" (1890/1891) by Claude Monet, in which for the first time a series was created that went beyond a mere group of works. The other artists, who addressed to the serial art, include Claude Monet, Piet Mondrian and above all Gerhard Richter.