Konrad Klapheck was born in
Düsseldorf on 10 February 1935 to arts historians and professors Richard and Anna Klappheck (née Strümpell, daughter of
Adolf Strümpell). From 1954 to 1956 Konrad studied painting under Bruno Goller at the
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Klapheck's works of the mid-1950s are in a
magic realist style that became more idiosyncratic when he painted the first of his
typewriters. Klapheck's subjects through the years included (in order of introduction) typewriters, sewing machines, water taps and showers, telephones, irons, shoes, keys, saws, car tires, bicycle bells, and clocks. Influenced by
Duchamp,
Man Ray, and
Max Ernst, Klapheck's "ironic treatment of everyday mechanics" prefigured
pop art in its magnification of the trivial. ==Notes==