The Faces of Keil: Chaos, Color, and Soul

You don't find Peter Keil; you collide with him. His creations don't sit still waiting for your respect or validation. They grip you. They ask something of you. And once he scrounged his way into your awareness, you'll never enjoy somewhat safe, somewhat muted art again.

I live in the city. I walk past color and chaos and spirit every day of my life. And when I first came across Keil's work, I felt like someone had finally captured that energy and put it on canvas. Not the skyline, the energy underneath that, the friction; the pulse, the confusion and joy; that loud, over saturated feeling of being alive, that's what Peter Keil does. He puts that feeling into paint.

1942 in Zossen, Germany, Keil was born into a country still recovering from war. His father died in World War II, and his mother was a seamstress trying to raise him in a broken world. That friction, beauty and brutality, survival and expression, is inherent in his work. He studied under Otto Nagel and trained in Berlin but truthfully, Keil always preferred creating art to perfecting it. And it's a lucky thing. Because when Keil is at his best, it's not polished work. It's alive. You can see the influence of the Berlin School, and you see the echoes of Picasso and Miró; but what makes Keil different is how personal it all feels. He painted faces that were never really faces. They were moods. Masks. Memories. Whatever he was feeling in that moment is what you, the viewer, were given. Pure, expressive, often chaotic emotion is unleashed without filter.

He painted like a man possessed. In studios, in hotel rooms, on bedsheets, Keil made thousands of works, and they all feel removed from something real. Raw. Honest. This is rare.

His career moved from Berlin to Palma de Mallorca to Paris, and his work moved with him. Bright, bold, full of life. You can still find most of the originals at reasonable prices, but I think those days are numbered. The art world is finally catching on the secret collectors have known for years: Peter Keil is the real thing.

That's why he's included in the Jiron Collection. I didn't select these works because they were fashionable, I selected them because they were humane. They cry, they sing, they exist on the wall. The Faces of Keil suite isn't just four paintings, it is four stories. Four expressions. Four visceral punches.

Should you be looking for safe art, this isn't it. But if you're looking for something that makes you feel again, some color that hits you in the chest like a drum, then welcome. You're in the right place.

Peter Keil does not paint for your pleasure, he paints to be felt, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

              - Jesse Jiron, Curator

Image Credit:
Photo by Robin Mischko, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Keil_mit_Majolika.jpg