Astrid Klein


Astrid Klein is a German contemporary artist. Klein works in a variety of mediums including painting, collage photography and installation.

Biography

Astrid Klein was born in Cologne in 1951 and trained at the Köln International School of Design from 1973 to 1977.
Klein became a Visiting Professor at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg in 1986. In 1993 she became Professor at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig where she continues to head the fine arts course.
The artist has received a variety of awards including the Käthe Kollwitz Prize in 1997 and the Cologne Fine Art Award in 2001.

Art

Photography

Klein began working with photography in 1978. Her early works were based on themes of human tragedy and often combined texts with images.
Klein produces photographic images on a large scale to make what she refers to as ‘photoworks’, distinguishing them from straightforward photographs. Starting with images drawn from newspapers and magazines, Klein transforms them with a variety of processing and printing techniques in the darkroom, often verging on abstraction. The resulting works question assumptions about photography as an accurate documentary medium.
Her photography work is in the permanent collection of the Tate.