Winfried Krüger: No Title

Unusual and unexpected: Jewellery by Winfried Krüger
Winfried Krüger (born 1944) belongs to a generation of jewellery artists that witnessed first-hand the birth of avantgarde jewellery in the 1960s. The trained goldsmith liberated himself from precision, fineness and other virtues of his craft, allowing his creativity to run freely.

He did not, however, defer to art jewellery without due thought; rather, he interpreted his models early on in a very personal way. Although he too used the technique of controlled chance popular in the 1960s, he avoided arbitrary superfi cial design and instead added striking metal effects with beads or stones. These unexpected elements created exciting compositions, which demonstrated his critical view of the modern mass production of jewellery as much as of the upcoming jewellery scene of the time and its often elite aspirations.

Equally as masterfully Krüger devotes himself to the contrasts between jewellery and drawing. He conveys their lightness in three dimensions, combines techniques and materials and shows that he is by no means infl uenced by one genre, even when it – like jewellery – is for him ever-present. From the sole of a shoe, through to fence railings in Italy, to the set of a science fi ction fi lm, he fi nds inspiration in everything. With technical ingenuity he transforms his ideas, with the wearability of his pieces assuming subordination. He has also taught his modern, innovative understanding of jewellery for over twenty years at the technical college for design in Pforzheim.

As far as the publication of his work is concerned, Winfried Krüger has always played hard to get. For the first time the current monograph presents the artist’s work in a comprehensive retrospective, focusing on works from the last twenty years. Numerous photographs from over fifty years impart an often personal insight into his life and work, with his drawings and designs allowing one to draw inferences about the creative process.

In the context of contemporary art jewellery, the work of Winfried Krüger is modest and non-conformist. Unfazed by the boundaries of his genre he experiments with everything that inspires him; he moves freely and masterfully between jewellery, drawing, painting and staging. This publication presents for the first time the artist’s diverse jewellery series since the 1960s in a comprehensive retrospective.

Foreword by Marie-José van den Hout.
Galerie Marzee (ed.).
Text in English and German.

Exhibition:
Jewellery by Winfried Krüger
Schmuckmuseum Pforzheim (DE), 19.7. to 19.10.2014, afterwards at Galerie Marzee, Nijmegen (NL).