While German post-war art was largely dominated by abstraction and Informalism in the late 1950s, Klapheck pursued different paths with his figurative visual language characterized by a perfect execution in combination with the immaculacy and a eroticization of everyday objects, creating a stark contrast to a gestural-lyrical abstraction far removed from the real, pictorial world. He found inspiration in, among others, Marcel Duchamp and the refined, enigmatic and irrational imagery of Surrealism, but also drew on contemporary advertisements showcasing the new variety of goods available in the post-war years. His repertoire of mostly mechanical objects can be divided into a total of eight groups: typewriters, sewing machines, shoe trees, bicycle bells, taps, showers and pipes as well as loudspeakers and sirens. The objects are usually integrated into an entirely space- and timeless composition, highly alienated and with attributes that undermine their actual meaning and utility.

He painted his first machine painting “Schreibmaschine" (Typewriter) in 1955. In 1957, he created his first sewing machine painting “Die gekränkte Braut" (The Offended Bride). At the time, Klapheck had broken up with his girlfriend Lilo, who would become his wife later on. He painted his landlady's Singer sewing machine and saw a portrait of Lilo as an abandoned bride in it: "Since I made this painting, I knew that all human relationships could be represented by machines" (quoted from: ex. cat. Konrad Klapheck, Museum Boymans van Beuningen 1974, p. 46). In Konrad Klapheck's paintings, the sewing machine becomes synonymous with femininity: “The sewing machine, the helper in covering our bareness, is feminine. She appears as bride, mother and widow.” (Klapheck, quoted from: Pierre 1970, p. 19).
Hence, his machine paintings are visualizations of human moods and portraits, which always include a retarding moment, as his mechanical structures are not functional. The sewing machine has a flywheel, but no belt, no needle and no stitch hole. Perhaps a “seer” does not need all these attributes, because she sees what awaits us without the burden of everyday life.

Konrad Klapheck's paintings are a surreal echo of a strong belief in technology and progress in the days of the Economic Miracle in Germany. He puts the idea of man at the heart of the machine and thus ties in with the ideas of surrealists such as Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. Pierre Restany comments: “From mechanics to meta-mechanics, the debate is still ongoing and the promising adventure of the machine is far from over” (quoted from: Le Surréalisme, vol. 42/43 d. Revue XXe siècle, Paris 1975, no p.). Living in the age of discussions about AI more than 60 years after Klapheck has made the “Seherin”, the issue remains topicaI for us. [EH]