C.O. Paeffgen

C. O. Paeffgen was born in Cologne in 1930. After having studied law in Cologne and Berlin and graduating in 1959, another six years passed before he found his way into art. In 1965 Paeffgen moved into a studio in Berlin and began to use wire to join together objects he found. In 1970 C. O. Paeffgen returned to Cologne, where he began to work on his 'Umwicklungen'. In his oeuvre, the 'Umrandungen' form a contrast to his wrapped objects. The 'Umrandungen' are mostly bordered photographs and newspaper clippings or traced contours of newspaper pictures projected onto canvas, symbol-like objects and multiples. Paeffgen's work is determined by simple symbols like heart, arrow, mouse and moon. With his ironic and funny drawings he thus reduces the pictorial idiom to simple symbols. In the tradition of Pop Art, where anything, no matter how trivial, becomes the subject of art, Paeffgen also worked with the trivial. Even though he was not predominantly regarded as a Pop Artist, he alienated old fruit boxes, painted over picture material from newspapers and magazines and put meshes of wire around everyday objects. Today Paeffgen lives and works in Cologne.

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