Page 16 - Studio International - August 1965

K.F.Dahmen Painter of Terrestrial Formations

by Hanns Theodor Fleming

PHOTO: MARA EGGERT

Karl Fred Dahmen is one of the pioneers of ·art informel'
in Germany. The painter was born in 1917 in Stolberg
near Aachen close to the Belgian frontier. He still lives
in Stolberg. Recently. he built himself a beautiful house
on a mountain slope and there he works in a spacious
adJoining studio creating his highly individualistic
·material' pictures and collages. Dahmen works with a
complete independence, undisturbed by any trends of
fashion. yet in constant touch with the world. and with
a fine sense for the formal problems of our time. He is
no theoretician; he speaks through the pictures which
he paints. assembles and rigs together with the skill
of the craftsman and with aesthetic sensibility.
Precisely today, at a time when pop and op art rigorously
displace all variations of action painting and ·art
informel' as fashionable new currents. the painters who
prove themselves are those who develop their own
conceptions, with ever new possibilities of expression.
Since 1950 Dahmen has been painting in an abstract
style. From landscape and town panorama he attained.
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