Jean-Pierre Kunkel
Jean-Pierre Kunkel, born in Lievin, France in 1950, became enthusiastic about artistic creation at an early age. Growing up in southern Germany, he went to Munich and Hamburg to study free painting, where photorealism emerged as a formative style. In the course of his creative development, Jean-Pierre Kunkel acquired an extensive range of techniques, from airbrush to photography, image editing, illustration, watercolor and oil on canvas to the symbiosis of all types of design.
This was followed by stays in the artistic metropolises of Paris and New York, where in 1978 he assisted the French advertising photographer and art activist Jean-Paul Goude with the illustration of his internationally renowned illustrated book Jungle Fever. That time greatly influenced Jean-Pierre Kunkel's photorealistic way of working that he perfected on the auto didactical basis later on. The native of Hamburg also made a name for himself beyond Germany as a freelance illustrator for advertising and magazines.
Internationally discussed, the Spiegel title The Bush Warriors (2002 / 2008).
Kunkel's works are based on photographs that are individually created and combined depending on the intended message. Each work is subject to a special aesthetic requirement, the basis of which is the digital composition of precisely fitting visual elements.
The motifs optimized in this way unfold their engaging and extraordinary effect when translated into oil on canvas.
Jean-Pierre Kunkel is particularly interested in idealization. Like his teacher Goude, he also approaches his own idea of perfect aesthetics through art. In this sense, photorealism is both a stylistic device and a technique.
Jean-Pierre Kunkel's current work encompasses four thematic areas that he alternately focuses on: Sea, Pool, Icons, and Advertising Pop-Art.
Advertising Pop Art
To create images on the theme of Advertising Pop Art, Jean-Pierre Kunkel used his pool of motifs from his work as a photorealistic illustrator and placed them in a new context. He combines the works created during his 40-year career in thematically mixed collages, thus creating surreal visual worlds with a completely new message. The expressive re-work of his realistic, idealized advertising works stems from the influences of Neo Pop of the 1980s and 1990s and elevates seemingly banal representational motifs to art by changing their size, material, and context. Kunkel himself calls his style Advertising Pop Art. He is also concerned with making the viewer understand that the starting point - the advertising illustration as such - is already art.
Creation process: Composing selected advertising illustrations on the computer / Digital image processing / Printing on canvas / Re-working the motif to optimize and exaggerate the image using acrylic and oil paints.
Jean-Pierre Kunkel's works are subject to a special aesthetic requirement, the basis of which is the digital composition of precisely fitting visual elements. The motifs wisely optimized in this way unfold their engaging and extraordinary effect when translated into oil on canvas. This technique also underlies his latest series ICONS in the style of Pop Art. For this, Kunkel has drawn on the wealth of existing photographs of extraordinary characters from the movie, fashion, and entertainment industries. His Marilyn Monroe was created by combining various photographic elements that the artist reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle, thus creating his personal ideal of the internationally renowned icon. His works are painted digitally on the computer, then printed on canvas, stretched on stretcher bars, and finished manually with acrylic paint. Using his technique, Jean-Pierre Kunkel achieves a triple level of design that makes serial works unique. In this way, the unique artistic personalities and their creative achievements are brought out and appreciated in a special way. Fractal construction of the visual environment emphasizes the often complex personality and life structures of the protagonists, which contributes in large part to the enduring fascination around their personality.
“Wave No. 14”
“Wave No. 17”
“Pool No. 31”
“Pool No. 33”
“Wave No. 16”
“Wave No. 2 black”
“Wave No. 7”
“Wave No. 11”
“Wave No. 13”
“Wave No. 15”
“Wave No. 18”
“Wave No. 19”
“Pool No. 8 vers. 2”
“Pool No. 15”
“Pool No. 17”
“Pool No. 22”
“Pool No. 27”
“Pool No. 28”
“Pool No. 30”
“Pool No. 33”
“Pool No. 34”
“Pool No. 35”
“Pool No. 36”
“Advertising Pop Art No. 1”
“Advertising Pop Art No. 2”
“Advertising Pop Art No. 3”
“Advertising Pop Art No. 4”
“Advertising Pop Art No. 5”
“Advertising Pop Art No. 6”
“ICONS James Dean”
“ICONS Kate Moss”
“ICONS Marilyn Monroe”
“ICONS Marilyn Monroe Leo”
“ICONS ”
“ICONS Steve McQueen”
