Peter Kalkhof was born in Stassfurt, Germany in 1933 and earned a scholarship as a mature student to attend the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1960. Inspired by European art, he created abstract artworks, most closely associated with the Concrete Art movement and its use of bold blocks of colour and geometric shapes. Kalkhof frequently displayed his work in solo and group exhibitions and also taught as a senior lecturer in fine art at the University of Reading from 1964 until his retirement in 1999.
Painter Peter Kalkhof was born on 20 December 1933 in Stassfurt, Germany, but his family was forced to flee westwards towards the end of the Second World War to escape the advancing Soviet forces. In 1949, Kalkhof began a carpentry apprenticeship in Seesen-Herrhausen and subsequently studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, between 1952–56. Kalkhof continued his education at the Academy of Fine Art in Stuttgart, where he was awarded first prize for portrait painting in 1959. In 1960, having received a scholarship to study at the Slade School of Fine Art, Kalkhof moved to London, followed by a year of study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Throughout his education, he became increasingly invested in contemporary avant-garde movements and began to move away from his neoclassical and modernist training.
On completing his art studies in 1963, Kalkhof resettled in London and married Jeanne Thé, a Thai jewellery designer he had met during his studies in Stuttgart in 1959. The couple had a son together and, after Jeanne’s death in 1996, Kalkhof published a book of her jewellery designs. In London, he worked as a lithographer at the noted Curwen Press and taught part-time at the University of Reading, where he was appointed a senior lecturer in Fine Art in 1966, and where he remained until his retirement in 1999.
Living in Notting Hill Gate in west London and maintaining a studio in north London, Kalkhof was a prolific artist working across a range of media. His art has evolved over time to become distinctive and highly recognisable in its use of uses formal elements of straight and curved lines with colour fields painted in grids, circles, and squares. By the mid-1960s, the relationship between colour and space had become the foundation of Kalkhof’s artistic practice and guided the rest of his career. He strongly believed in the transcendental qualities of art and the power of organised form and colour to stimulate a heightened perception of the natural world. Kalkhof was greatly inspired by abstract artists such as Malevich, Mondrian, Kandinsky and Rothko. Furthermore, he was significantly influenced by his extensive travels and different cultures he encountered; Kalkhof undertook numerous study trips around the world, including one in 1969–70 encompassing the Caribbean and the Pacific, arriving in mainland China and Thailand. Kalkhof exhibited in many notable group shows including British Painting ’74, Hayward Gallery, London (1974) and The Seventies, Brixton Art Gallery, 1985. In 1987 he received a mural commission for the Treaty Centre, Hounslow, for the Taylor Woodrow Group.
Kalkhof also held a number of solo shows, including a retrospective at the Camden Arts Centre in 1989. However, his main gallery representation remained with London gallery, Annely Juda for more than 40 years. Throughout the 1960s, Kalkhof developed a friendship with the German-born, emigré gallerist Annely Juda, with whom he exhibited regularly, staging his last exhibition at her eponymous gallery in 2012, two years before his death. Peter Kalkhof died in London, England on 24 February 2014. His artworks are represented in UK public collections, including the Imperial War Museum, Arts Council Collection, and the University of Reading Art Collection, while his estate and artistic legacy is managed by the Peter Kalkhof Foundation.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Peter Kalkhof]
Publications related to [Peter Kalkhof] in the Ben Uri Library