Federico Klemm

Buenos Aires Herald. Sunday, December 1, 2002   

Federico Klemm

By Alina Tortosa

For the Herald

Federico Klemm, (1942, Checoslovakia), died last Wednesday, November 27, at 2 pm after a long bout of pneumonia.  Well known as an artist, who was not about promoting himself shamelessly,  he was also known as the director of his art gallery, the Federico Jorge Klemm Foundation, as a generous art collector, who shared his cherished acquisitions with the public that went to his art gallery, through the yearly Klemm Prize, and through his extraordinary cable art program: El banquete telemático.  Mr. Klemm’s  profile veered from the lovable to the ridiculous. He was an ultra extravagant, media character, larger than life itself, as well as a quiet and discreet benefactor of artists in need. 

His work as a figurative artist was strongly influenced by his profound love for his mother. Imbued with mystical feelings for her and of himself, and with an overwhelming sense of the theatrical, he painted several large compositions, esoteric representations of both of them, himself as Christ and the small blonde woman as the mother of God, reigning supreme. These paintings proclaimed gorgeously and proudly his Freudian attachment to her. He was influenced as well by his rampant homosexuality, his love for the human body, for physical pleasure and for the lyrical aesthetics that drove him to redesign his own image in several guises.

His sumptuous birthday party dinners at the Alvear Hotel were legendary glamorous evenings on which Klemm let his imagination lose, as much of a performance as any art event. 

The Federico Jorge Klemm Foundation hosts several art shows a year, promoting the work by young and not so young artists,  publishes books, and organizes lectures and seminars.  The Foundation will carry on the work started by its founder.