From: 14 october 2017
Through: 07 january 2018
Location: Museum de Fundatie and Kasteel het Nijenhuis

Markus Matthias Krüger - hortus

Young Leipzig-based artist Markus Matthias Krüger (b. 1981) makes extraordinary landscapes. Trees breaking through roofs, houses overgrown with plants and fire setting the forest alight. From 14 October 2017 more than 40 of his paintings will be on display at Museum de Fundatie’s Kasteel het Nijenhuis.

Krüger, born in Gardelegen in Saxony-Anhalt in 1981, studied painting at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig. He soon turned his attention exclusively to landscape painting. His landscapes feature no people, although evidence of their intervention in the landscape is clear. At first glance his pictures seem tranquil, and yet disaster looms. The extraordinary encroaches on the ordinary, and no one is responding. Tiny apocalypses occur: individual trees catch fire, a few houses collapse. Krüger arranged motifs like hay bales, trees and bricks very carefully, giving his landscapes an abstract and universal feel. His orderly compositions contrast with the unspoilt beauty of nature.

Tiny apocalypses occur: individual trees catch fire, a few houses collapse.

Kruger

Krüger’s work is part of a long tradition of landscape painting. The influences of Claude Lorrain, Jacob van Ruisdael, William Turner and Leipziger Schule artist Wolfgang Mattheuer – whose work will be exhibited at the same time at De Fundatie Zwolle – are all evident. In 2017 Krüger was awarded the ‘Kunstpreis der Ursula Mattheuer-Neustädt und Wolfgang Mattheuer Stiftung‘.

Markus Matthias Krüger, Solitär, 2014, acrylic and oil on canvas, 40 x 30 cm, private collection.