Die Fragen der Sphinx. 1984.
Charcoal and blue pen on transparent paper.
Signed and dated in lower left. 121 x 114 cm (47.6 x 44.8 in), the full sheet.
Preliminary drawing in same size for the painting "Die Fragen der Sphinx" (1984), today on loan at the Musée de Grenoble from an important corportae collection. [JS].

• Klapheck is renowned as the inventor and master of the "machine picture", which he sees as a mirror of human existence.
• Exhibited together with the painting of the same title in the "Konrad Klapheck/Gustave Moreau" exhibition at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris in 2008.
• While Klapheck's "super-representational" paintings fascinate with their maximum perfection, Klapheck's "preliminary drawings" are unique testimonies to the underlying, meticulous complex creative process.
• Klapheck's drawings are the "witnesses of [his] struggle with their sweaty smell of desperate searching and groping" (K. Klapheck, 1982).

PROVENANCE: Art dealer Wolfgang Wittrock, Düsseldorf (with the label on the frame).
Private collecton North Rhine-Westphalia (acquired from the above in 1991).

EXHIBITION: Konrad Klapheck/Gustave Moreau, Musée d`Orsay, Paris, June 3 - September 14, 2008.

Konrad Klapheck 2007, in: Bilder und Texte, Düsseldorf 2013, p. 138.