Kurt Knobelsdorf

Catalog essay from Brick Walk & Harvey 2

Kurt Knobelsdorf, a young painter from Philadelphia, paints architecture, landscape and figures from life, his own photography and found imagery. After winning awards at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts he came under the influence of EM Saniga (seen elsewhere in this catalog.) What they share as painters is a commitment to the infinite potentiality of a small rectangle and a tenebrous, dry surface that loves the middle to darker tone. Despite their distressed qualities, these panels display a startling freshness.

Lancaster Pike describes a crossroads that might have stepped out of Robert Frank's The Americans. Similarly in Landsdale, a pair of ladies in front of their door feels like an animated snapshot from along the road. In fact the artist painted this from an old Polaroid he found on the street. There is a sense that Knobelsdorf is channeling imagery, whether in the direct paintings he does outdoors such as Lancaster Pike or in his images from found sources.

The marks and scratches in the paint and his tamped down color reflect life's fragility. These are paintings that understand the reality of experience lived hard. That they understand the potency of images as well as the ability of painterly facture to deliver visual information is part of their small miracle.