Ein bißchen Hoffnung, 1978

About the Work

Konrad Klapheck's 'A Little Hope' is a typewriter key. The Düsseldorf artist embedded this precisely but by no means photorealistically painted object in an abstract composition which is beyond both space and time. What is missing, though, is sign or a letter - in other words, the very thing required to make the object a typewriter key. Klapheck began developing his own distinct style of 'superobjectivity' from 1955 on - in an atmosphere in which progress was equated with abstraction. For Klapheck, the machines are symbol-laden reflections of man, ultimately himself. He explicitly compares his typewriter pictures with soldiers.