Jim Beam Painting

Ralf Metzenmacher paints modern, unaffected still lifes using the painting technique of the old masters. His oil paintings radiate bright intense colour with modern hues luminous in their quality. At first glance the style is evocative of Pop-Art. Indeed the artist refers to his work as a "further development" of Pop-Art. This art movement emerged independently in England and the USA during the 50s and effectively combines art with graphics. In contrast, the new Retro-Art style merges art with product design. As opposed to the very straightforward two-dimensional portrayals so typical of Pop-Art, Metzenmacher's Retro-Art paintings feature three-dimensional spatial representations. Pop-Artists took their themes from comic strips and advertisements. Whilst Ralf Metzenmacher, paintbrush artist®, finds much of his inspiration in youth culture and areas of lifestyle and design, he also looks to society and politics for his stimuli. Ralf Metzenmacher sees his Retro-Art technique as a revitalization of 17th century still life painting. It is often difficult, some would say near impossible, for today's viewer to decipher the meaning behind these old paintings; to determine the connection between the objects depicted and that which they represent. And so Metzenmacher has made it his goal to make use of simple, easy to understand symbols. Some examples include: "The Cherry Rose", "Piercing", "The Melon Princess", and "The Crown". His Retro-Art style takes familiar forms and either renders them abstract or develops them into something new yet still reminiscent of their original form (e.g. mussels, snails). Metzenmacher portrays existing forms in an alternative way and adds new elements in order to clarify new connections and content. This approach is comparable to the modus operandi of product design, where designers draw upon an existing model to help them evolve the next generation.