Mati Klarwein Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1932 - d. 2002

Abdul Mati Klarwein (April 9, 1932 – March 7, 2002) was a French painter of German origin best known for his works used on the covers of music albums.

Mati Klarwein was born in Hamburg, Germany. His mother Elsa Kühne was an opera singer and his father Joseph Klarwein was a Brick Expressionist architect and later with the Bauhaus movement.[1] His family was of Jewish origin and they fled to the British Mandate of Palestine when he was two years old, after the rise of Nazi Germany. In 1948 when the territory became Israel, his family traveled to Paris. There Mati studied from 1949 to 1951 with Fernand Léger, and attended the art schools École des Beaux-Arts and Académie Julian.[2]

Klarwein added "Abdul" (which means "servant" in Arabic) to his name in the late 1950s to express his sentiments about the hostility between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East: he felt that to understand each other better, every Jew should adopt a Muslim first name, and vice versa.[3] In 1956 he met Kitty Lillaz, and traveled with her around the world, including Tibet, India, Bali, North Africa, Turkey, Europe and the Americas.

In the early 1960s he settled for a while in New York City, meeting Jimi Hendrix. At a New York exhibition in 1961, organized by Lillaz for the unveiling of the painting Flight to Egypt[4] Klarwein met Salvador Dali for the first time, whom he called a spiritual father.[5] The same year he met his wife Sofia Klarwein.[2] Among other painters he met more often was Arik Brauer.[2] In 1965, he obtained French citizenship with the support of André Malraux.