“Atalanta fugiens – Birth“

Alfred Klinkan painted vivid pictures in vivid colours, was lavish with ideas and motifs, used themes he had "read" about, was a "learned" painter at a time when the painting of pictures was disapproved. Klinkan adopted a representational style of painting when most of his fellow artists concentrated on minimalism. Biographic themes, reflecting his own life, are frequently found in his œuvre. One could call Klinkan the "photographer of his life". In "Atalanta fugiens – Birth" he took up a theme from the Greek mythology that he interpreted in his own way to allow us to submerge ourselves in a fantastic pictorial world. In this picture we see two figures, perhaps Atalante and Melanion, half lion, half human, or perhaps the painter and his wife, sitting in tender embrace in front of a cave. The picture is strewn with the mythical creatures so typical of Klinkan; the hare as the symbol of fertility and the serpent of temptation, halfway devoured by a crocodile or the other way round. The colours are rather subtle. Klinkan's pictures leave a strong impression because they are different from those of his contemporaries, they are spontaneous and truly individual, not speculative and in their originality unmistakably his.