Sebastian Kruger

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Sebastian Krüger (2016)

Sebastian Krüger (born June 30, 1963 in Hameln ) is a German painter who is best known for his caricatures and artist portraits.

Live and act

Sebastian Krüger attended the Heinrich-Göbel-Realschule in Springe . After studying painting at the University of Fine Arts in Braunschweig with Dörfler, he caused a sensation as the designer of numerous press covers at home and abroad, as an illustrator and not least as a creative creator of various record covers. Krüger designed the album cover Pik Sibbe for the Cologne rock band BAP from 1993 and various record covers for the German thrash metal band Tankard from Frankfurt am Main. Krüger later withdrew from this area in order to devote himself entirely to free painting. His artistic development from the former so-called “star caricaturist” has led him in recent years to a star of New Pop Realism, whose works of art are appreciated and collected by world stars such as his friends with the Rolling Stones and by art connoisseurs from all over the world.

In the quarter of a century of his work, Krüger has devoted himself to the puzzle of his work with identity and pose, with the authenticity of the fictional, in the spirit of New Pop Art, and has thus established himself as a popular painter. The creative reflection on the machinery of media staging, the iconomania of contemporary image production, is the defining characteristic of his works; his faces are a homage to the world of beautiful appearances, to the rock and pop culture of the sixties, with which the painter cultivated an almost ritual relationship. According to his own statement about his work (“Everything is just a transition!”), He has been devoting himself for several years with the same artistic passion to reworking the private space of his childhood over the same period. In 2016 the Caricatura Museum für Komische Kunst in Frankfurt am Main dedicated a large special exhibition to his life's work. In the July / August 2020 issue (No. 398) the heavy metal music magazine Rock Hard published a six-page interview with artist Sebastian Krüger. He is the creator of the band mascots Alien from Tankard, Mad Butcher from Destruction and Ratman from Risk . For the album The Meaning of Life by the German thrash metal band Tankard, which was released in 1990, Krüger created an album cover on which Pope John Paul II and Chancellor Helmut Kohl are sitting with a glass of beer in a smoky pub the head of the Catholic Church is smoking a joint with an upside-down gold cross hanging around his neck while used condoms are lying around under his chair. In addition, the Pope wears a tattoo on his right forearm. Boxing athlete Mike Tyson sits at the next table in front of them . Krüger also designed the cover of the album From the Trashcan to the Ballroom by the rockabilly / punk'n'roll band The Raymen from 1987, on which a nightly music club can be seen with a black limousine parked in front of it .

Krüger names Volker Ernsting , Jean Mulatier , Patrice Ricord , Norman Rockwell , Frank Frazetta and Francis Bacon as formative role models who had a lasting influence on his personal work .

For the 1990 album Crazy World by the German hard rock band Scorpions, Krüger painted an intended cover picture with caricatures of the band members. The rock group became aware of Sebastian Krüger through various illustrations by the Rolling Stones in an issue of the Illustrierte Stern . During the process of creating the painting, the Scorpions visited the painter in his small studio and tried to make suggestions for improvement, for example the size of a nose and the physical girth of the figures. In return, Krüger was allowed to visit the rock band in a recording studio in Amsterdam when the Scorpions recorded the song Tease Me Please Me for the album Crazy World . Regarding the commissioned work, however, the record company rejected the finished result on the grounds that, apart from guitarist Rudolf Schenker , the recognition value of the individual band members was not great enough to use the painting as an album cover. When Guns N 'Roses guitarist Slash released the second album Ain't Life Grand of his band project Slash's Snakepit in 2000 , he sent Sebastian Krüger a demo cassette with the songs and the order to paint a picture of the rock band within of the enclosed booklet should be printed. Afterwards, however, Slash was so enthusiastic about the caricature that he chose the illustration as the cover of the album.

The artist lives and works near Hanover and in California .

Works (selection)

  • INSIGHTS by Sebastian Krüger - Vol. 1 , 2 workshop documentations + drawings, Springe: Faustmann & Schönebaum GbR, 2011, self-published
  • Faces: The Art of Sebastian Krüger , German / English; Zug, Switzerland: Ed. C; 2008; Oldenburg: Lappan, ISBN 978-3-8303-5000-2
  • Stars , with texts by Michael Lang ; Zug, Switzerland: Ed. C; 1997; Oldenburg: Lappan, ISBN 978-3-89082-730-8
  • Stones , German / English; Zug, Switzerland: Ed. C; 2005; Oldenburg: Lappan, ISBN 978-3-89082-505-2
  • Rolling Stones , Thurn: Ed. Art of Comics, 1990, ISBN 3-923102-45-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Which school for my child? , Supplement to the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung from January 12, 2011, p. 18
  2. ↑ Rock Hard , German music magazine, No. 398, issue July / August 2020. Behind the scenes: Sebastian Krüger - mascots enrich life , interview by Felix Mescoli. Rock Hard Verlags- und Handels-GmbH, Dortmund. P. 73
  3. ↑ Rock Hard , German music magazine, No. 398, issue July / August 2020. Behind the scenes: Sebastian Krüger - mascots enrich life , interview by Felix Mescoli. Rock Hard Verlags- und Handels-GmbH, Dortmund. P. 74
  4. ↑ Rock Hard , German music magazine, No. 398, issue July / August 2020. Behind the scenes: Sebastian Krüger - mascots enrich life , interview by Felix Mescoli. Rock Hard Verlags- und Handels-GmbH, Dortmund. P. 74
personal data
SURNAME Kruger, Sebastian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter
DATE OF BIRTH June 30, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamelin