Peter Robert Keil - "Famous Actress", 100 x 70

Peter Robert Keil (born August 6, 1942 in Züllroch? Züllichau, Province of Brandenburg)

Oil/acrylic on canvas, thickly applied paint

Size approx. 100 x 70 cm

Signed bottom right and verso / additionally titled and dated: 1994

Condition good, colors strong and slightly fast-drying; occasional impression marks in the edge area.

Peter Robert Keil (born August 6, 1942 in Zülllichau, Province of Brandenburg) is a German painter and sculptor.

The son of a metalworker for the arts lost his father very early in childhood during World War II. His artistically gifted mother struggled with her son through West Berlin during the final phase of the war, where the two settled after the war.

There Keil grew up in the working-class district of Berlin-Wedding and soon discovered his interest in painting—especially in expressionist artists and in the works of Pablo Picasso.

The painter Otto Nagel, who came from East Berlin, became his mentor from around 1954 and taught him initial craft skills and painting techniques.

In 1956 Keil began training as an art fitter (Kunstschlosser), who between 1959 and 1961 pursued studies at the Berlin University of the Arts.

With the construction of the Berlin Wall, contact with Nagel, Keil’s mentor, largely broke off and Keil relocated his residence increasingly abroad from the early 1960s.

When he began his studies at the Berlin University of the Arts, Keil came into contact with numerous other artists who would shape his generation, such as Georg Baselitz, Eugen Schönebeck, Markus Lüpertz, and Joachim Schmettau.

During his time in Mallorca he also met Joan Miró several times in his studio.

From the early 1960s Keil took studios in Paris, London, Berlin and the United States. Today he lives and works mostly in Zimmerau (Bavaria), Berlin and Los Angeles.

In the early phase of his artistic work, Peter Keil’s style was aligned with German Expressionism.

Thematic interest in his works from the early Berlin years initially focused mainly on typical urban milieus and marginal figures of society.

At the same time as his stay in Paris and the associated immersion in the nightlife there at the beginning of the 60s, a large change in his style can be observed.

Keil increasingly moved away from a realistic conception toward a new, much more spontaneous and dynamic painting style, which he further developed during his London years and finally as part of the Berlin Neue Wilde at the beginning of the 1980s.

The use of intense to garish colors, as well as the rejection of realistic figuration, have since been the typical features of his painting style.

The color of his pictures is applied with rapid and quick brushstrokes and occasionally thickly, and the motifs of his pictures are repeatedly distorted by graffiti elements.

Thematisch bevorzugt Keil menschliche Figuren, Porträts, Großstadtszenen, Landschaften und Blumenstilleben.

Keil’s emotional painting is driven above all by a desire to liberate himself from societal constraints and conventions.