KURT CRAEMER

(German, 1912-1961)

WOMAN RECLINING

Pastel and Gouache on Paper

20½ x 15¾ Inches

Signed Lower Left, 'Craemer' and Dated 1953

 

Framed in a custom-made, carved giltwood frame with silk mat and gilt slip.

Framed dimensions: 26¾ H x 1¼ D x 21½ W inches

 

Kurt Craemer first attended the Academy of Cologne (1928) where he studied under Friedrich Ahlers-Hesterman. He later traveled to Paris with his teacher, where he was introduced to the work of Henri Matisse. Returning to Germany in 1930, he studied at the Dusseldorf Art Academy under Paul Klee. With the Nazi's ascent to power in 1933, Craemer moved to Italy and lived there at the Art colony in Ischia until the end of the war when he moved to Positano.

 

During the 1950's, Kurt Craemer remained in Italy and exhibited with success internationally, including at the Venice Biennale (1952, 1958), the Hella Nebelung gallery in Düsseldorf (1953) and the Düsseldorf Art Association (1963). He also exhibited with success in Switzerland, Germany and Italy and also in the United States. Craemer's body of work, most of which was created in Positano in the late 1940s and 1950s, represents an important chapter in the history of the art of the province of Salerno and includes this work. In 2012, the centenary of the Craemer's birth, the city of Positano commemorated the artist with a special celebration.

 

Reference:

Kurt Craemer: Mein Panoptikum, epilogue by Rudolf Hagelstange, Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg, 1965; Kurt Craemer 1912-1961. Dedicated to memory by his friends with reproduction of his pictures and drawings, Ernst Hauswedell & Co, 1963; Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Kurt Craemer (Illustrator), Edgar Johnson (Introduction): The Last Days of Pompeii, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1979; et al.