MATI & THE MUSIC: 52 Records covers (1955 / 2005)

Limited edition book of only 500 numbered copies.

Accompanying the launch of this book is a double album of a previously unreleased MILES DAVIS concert that was part of his 1969 "BITCHES BREW" European tour, with a portrait of Betty Davis on the cover. The painting known as Zonked had been commissioned by the trumpet player but was never used at the time, due to their separation.

The double album

will be sold exclusively with the book.

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antoine@galerie213.com

Price: € 290

Mati Klarwein’s place in the history of 20th century art is unique, nestling at the crossroads of painting and music. From the end of the 1960s, a period as fruitful as it was revolutionary, numerous musicians such as Miles Davis, Carlos Santana and Jimi Hendrix recognised a statement of intent in his work and used it on their record covers as a manifesto. At a time when it was all about vinyl, the cover was more than just a simple illustration, it was a form of visual support, an object of meditation that listeners would gaze at relentlessly while playing their records. Mati Klarwein’s paintings, through their thematic wealth and visionary depth, fitted perfectly with the new values these musicians wanted to express and they subse-quently became the artistic counterpoint to legendary albums like Bitches Brew, Abraxas and This is Madness by the Last Poets, the prophets of hip hop and rap.

Musicians continued to identify with Mati Klarwein’s paintings over the following decades. Antoine de Beaupré, a passionate collector, has found more than 50 album covers coming from almost every genre, from classical to electro-jazz, all with the artist’s signature. Some used an existing painting; others were commissioned especially such as the portraits of Buddy Miles, Greg Allman and the group Earth, Wind and Fire. For the first time ever this book presents the album covers in their entirety, accompanied by related texts, photos and documents with a preface by the writer Serge Bramly (Prix Interallié 2008), a life-long friend of the artist.

Mati Klarwein, visionary artist

Son of a Bauhaus architect and an opera singer, Mati Klar-wein was born in Germany in 1932, he grew up in Palestine, started painting in Paris, in Fernand Léger’s studio where he met Salvador Dali, then later in the Viennese painter Ernst Fuchs’ studio, he obtained French nationality with the help of Madame Malraux, played jazz with Boris Vian before moving to New York in the mid 1960s in the middle of the hippy revolution and he never stopped moving his studio across the world from India, Bali and Morocco to Brazil, Greece, Ghana, Cuba and elsewhere, before ending up in his Balearic village of predilection, Deia, where he passed away in March 2002. His oeuvre consists of more than 600 paintings, including 270 portraits, 280 landscapes, which he called Inscapes, and over 100 Improved Paintings, canvases bought at flea markets which he then adapted into his own work.