Klaus Clausmeyer

Klaus Clausmeyer (* 1887 in Munich ; † March 11, 1968 in Düsseldorf ; actually Karl Claus-Meyer ) was a German painter and collector.

Life

During his lifetime he was in demand as a portraitist and actor in large-format social scenes. During the First World War, Clausmeyer decided to collect Buddhist art (a Buddha head rolled at his feet in the ruins of a contested street in Belgium). Later he focused his collection on Africa and Oceania. His objects filled every corner of his studio apartment.

In 1966 he signed a contract that made his collection the property of the City of Cologne. The city undertook to process the collection scientifically and to have it published. The collection ended up in the holdings of the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne ; it includes around 1000 objects from Africa and Oceania and other objects from different parts of Asia. Famous works from the collection are loaned all over the world and are depicted in numerous publications as prime examples of African and oceanic art.

It is known that Clausmeyer used an idiosyncratic approach to his objects and sometimes made changes to them: For example, he hung a sperm whale tooth around the neck of a figure of a Polynesian "fisherman god", which is famous today, or he made a skull trophy from Polynesia with window putty to make a Melanesian ancestral skull around. Such interventions were reversed by the restorers of the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum . The non-European cultures had no demonstrable influence on Clausmeyer's own artistic work.

literature

• Klaus Volprecht: Clausmeyer Collection - Africa . 1972
• Margaret Trowell and Hans Nevermann: Art in Pictures. Africa and Oceania . 1980
• Waldemar Stöhr: Art and Culture of the South Seas. The Clausmeyer Collection - Melanesia . Published by the City of Cologne, 1987, ISBN 3-923158-11-4
• Gisela Völger: Art of the world in the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Cologne . 1999
• H.Thode-Arora: Tapa and Tiki. The Polynesian Collection of the Rautenstrauch Joest Museum . 2001