The Ideals of the Fathers, 1965
Oil on canvas
(H x W)150 × 150 cm
About the workA monumental typewriter dominates this image, evoking a time when mechanical and analogue machines governed everyday life. With the title of the painting, the Düsseldorf artist Konrad Klapheck refers to a patriarchal era, to an authoritarian social order with threatening qualities. The individual keys of the typewriter are neatly arranged like an army in which it is not the individual that counts but rather the docile masses. Klapheck’s work illustrates the “banality of evil” that the philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote about in 1963 in her report on the Eichmann trial.
AccessionKemp Collection Foundation
Provenance[...]; o.D. Sidney Janis Gallery, New York; o.D. Galerie Zwirner, Köln; Juni 1974 Willi Kemp (Köln 1927 - 2020 Düsseldorf) erworben von der Galerie Zwirner; 2011 Stiftung Sammlung Kemp im Kunstpalast erworben durch Schenkung Willi Kemp
Inventory number0.mkp.2011.Kemp106
