"Connection" Painting

H.P. Kolb is a German artist whose artistic career spans more than four decades – from his early oil paintings in his great-uncle’s studio, through three decades as a pioneer of digital art and photomanipulation, to an impressive return to painting in 2024.
As a commercial artist, Kolb created illustrations and visual concepts for internationally renowned companies such as BASF, Mercedes-Benz, Siemens and Heidelberger Druck. In 1990, he was part of the first generation of artists to embrace digital tools and became a pioneer of Photoshop retouching at a time when the technology was still in its infancy. For three decades, the screen was his canvas – a space in which he explored fantastical worlds and the fluid fusion of humans, animals and nature.
When artificial intelligence began to produce within minutes what once required weeks of skill and dedication, Kolb made a conscious decision: to return to his roots. Back to oil painting. Back to the physical, the irreducible, the unmistakable.
His current style lies at the intersection of visionary Neo-Expressionism and Abstract Expressionism – incorporating elements of Surrealism and his own distinctive visual language. Kolb works with oil paint on canvas, often using a palette knife – a technique that creates impasto textures, vibrant areas of colour and an almost sculptural surface. His works combine figurative painting with expressive abstraction: semi-realistic faces and heads merge into abstract bands of colour and textures – a style that appeals to both collectors of contemporary art and lovers of expressive and abstract painting.