born in 1952 in Bloemendaal, Holland
studio in Malaga, Spain

At 19 years old he started a long oddysey, travelling through the entire continents of North and South America. So five years passed by.
Back in Holland he settled in Amsterdam. Here he did his art training in the bohemian studio of the painter Jacques von Pell, with whom he worked for four years.
Later, in 1981, in his own studio, also in the Dutch capital, he started working professionally as a painter, adding photography and graphic design.
In 1989 he celebrated a single day farewell exhibition. Then he took all the paintings off their stretchers, and left his entire oeuvre till so far behind. He did not see it again. With his easel, and some drawingmaterials he took the first train to Spain. He settled in Malaga.
His first exhibition in the city took place that very year in Galeria Terral.
Later, after having moved to Mijas, in the same province of Malaga, he rebuilded the former little supermarket “Pepa” of the “Barrio Santana” into his studio. Since then he shows regularly his new work in municipal and provincial exhibition rooms, international contemporary art fairs and galleries, such as the Ateneo in Malaga, Galeria “H” in Marbella, Artsists Assocation “Espacio Tres”, or the galleries “Denis” and “Reding” in Malaga.
From 1998 Montage Gallery represents his work in Great Britain. In 2000 the Ton Warndorff Gallery in Haarlem (NL), and José Maria Alvarez in his "Reding" Gallery in Malaga, organised two representative shows of Krafts work. In 2001 the University of Malaga, in collaboration with the Association of Artists in Malaga (APLAMA) presented an exhibition, dedicated exclusively to his work on paper.
For 2003 exhibitions are planned in London and in Florence.

....the paper, as the essential support and denominator of this show, allows him to contrast and play with a variaty of elements. Under the common designation "mixed techniques", pigments, acrilics, oils flow together, creating spaces, opting essentially for the two dimentional ones. The particular use of wax, applied as a varnish provides protection and a finish in the final result peculiar to this artist.... an abstraction that makes him experiment in the infinite fields of creativity, from his "geological landscapes" until the present show... a work that plays with the apparent order-disorder, the sequence of closed and deviding foelds... a progressive overriding of the closed fields makes one wonder if Kraft, in his investigations, has reached the absolute limits of the two dimentional, and is soon to approach corporeal volumes, like sculptures. Otherwise perhaps he will experiment with empty surfaces, cleared of all elements, in search for the priority of plastic space and ist unchoate origins ...
Lourdes Jiménez Fernández (Art historian)
From the article: "Ernst Kraft, Work on paper"
Published In the catalogue of the exhibition, University of Malaga, issue 4, 2001


... of this pilgrimage, closer to the spiritual, result in a work that's carried out with considerable thrift. The naturalness and serenity thta it transmits is the fruit of a conjunction of several elements. One of them is the combination of the free touch of the brush, together with the cultivation of the line, wich means, the consiliation of the gestural stroke with this broken line, fragile, unstable and with an orographical character, that Kraft uses in the lower part of the canvas. The quietness that the painting breathes is also due to his delicate way in applying the colour, without any noisiness, compensating the tones, softening an almost neutral palette, broken only by the blue and the red.
This timeless subterranean voyage is in ist totallity coverd with miniscul cells, the result of the pressing a net on ther still fresh paint, that, like a spiderwebm withhoolds any possible movement of thes plates of inorganic material. This effect unifies the pictorial surface, and gives it ist final character....
Bernardina Roselló
From the essay about the painting "Tierra XXIII" (Collection Diputacón Malaga)
Published In "Informativo", Nr. 43, 2000


... contemplating the painting of Ernst Kraft it is easy to see this abstractionist process, in which amorphous forms, with rough profiles, as if they were crystalographic structures, gives a feeling of landscape, unreal and feverish. A rocky world, empty and sandy, in which only the material, in state of fromation or decay, creates a vobrant orography and yet is at the same time rigid. There is no live, nor any organic form, nor possible biological nature in this world, in which Kraft, like a good Dutchman, uses the earth against the seas and the skies. It's all about purely inorganic landscape, which behaves as if it is the very denial of this landscape, as if the world didn't exist, or was starting to be created. There is nothing living, neither is there anything that could make us suppose that the material, though unique, is transformable. Ernst Kraft is digging into his interior, as if he was looking through a microscoop at the tranvers of a sandgrane. Interior landscape, his inner landscape. Intrinsic look, that comes back to itself. Contemplation of the occult. A world that starts, or a world that ends. Nature is denied, but the gesture is accepted, the first or maybe the last breath of exitence. Landscape that represents the denial, the arbitry nature and the enigma of what is to be born and of what is to die. Kraft hits the essence of origins, tries te reveal the convulsive energy enclosed in the material, the only laws that rule the behaviour of all parts, the definite enigma of the universe and ist origins ...
Antonio Abad (Art critic and writer)
From the essay: "The inner meanings of the landscape of Ernst Kraft"
Published in the catalogue of "Reding" Art Galley, January 30, 2000


....Kraft puts his wide range of earth colouring, like ochres and sienna, in contrast with the white of the prepared canvas. The contrast, maybe his most evident and persisting obsession in all his work, imposes a permanent tension between the smooth tecture of the whitened canvas an dthe rough applied texture of the elaborated part.
These lines represent his work perfectly . Contrast, light, shades, wild force, sweetened by drawing. It places us (Why not? In possible landscapes like El Chorro or El Torcal. But this ruled by the mostpure laws of abstract painting....
Angel Guerrero
From the article: "Ernst Kraft exhibits in the Unicaja "
Published In "Sol de Antequera", January 9, 1999

2002 Paint/graph, “Montage Gallery”, Castleton (UK)
2002 Object “El inmueble – arte en domicilio”, Las edades de Oxido – (Group), Malaga
2002 Paint./graph, “Alquitrán” Casa Cultura “Las Lagunas”, Mijas Costa
2002 Graphics, “Work on paper” (Gr.) Galeria ”Mecenas”, Malaga
2001 Paintings “Fusión Hispano-Holandés” (Group), Organized by Consulate of the Netherlands, Torremolinos
2001 Graph/piant, “Work on Paper”, University of Malaga, Malaga
2001 Colloquio, “Present Painting” in “Ambito Cultural”, Corte Ingles, Organized by Kylix Magazine and Corte Ingles, Malaga
2001 Graphics , “Montage Gallery” (Group) (UK)
20000 / 01 Graphics, Galería “Mecenas” (Group), Malaga
2000 Paintings, “Nomadas” (Artistas del Movimiento) Estepona, Ronda, etc. final exhibition: Malaga
2000 Paintings, “Summer exhibition", Galería “Granada Capital” (Group), Granada
2000 Paintings, “Montage Gallery”, Castleton (UK)
2000 Paintings, “Ton Warndorff Gallery”, Haarlem (NL)
2000 International Fair of Contemporary Art “ARCALE”, Salamanca
2000 Paintings, Galería de Arte “Reding”, Malaga
2000 Paintings, I.C.I. (itenerant) (UK)

2003 Paint/Graph, “Arch Gallery” (04 April, 2003), London (UK)
2003 International Bienal of contemporary art, Florence (I)

1999 Drawings, Col. San Augustin (Group), Malaga
1999 Paintings, MDM Benefit exh. Caja Rural, Malaga
1999 Paintings, Duo exh.,Espacio Tres, Malaga
1999 Paintings, “Tierra”, Unicaja Exhibition room, Antequera
1998 / 99 Paintings, “Twenty by Twenty”, Espacio Tres (Group), Malaga
1998 Paintings, ARCALE – Town Hall (Group), Mijas
1998 Paintings, “Towards the horizon” (Group), organized by Montage Gallery, Redcar (UK)
1998 Paintings, Montage Gallery, Castleton (UK)
1998 Paintings, Town Hall Exhibition room, Mijas
1998 International Fair of Contemporary Art - “ARCALE”, Salamanca
1998 Paintings, Galería “Espacio Tres”, Malaga
1997 Paintings, Gallerie Hüsstege (Group), Den Bosch (NL.)
1997 Paintings, Galería, “Denis”, Malaga
1996 Paintings, Galería “Espacio Tres", Malaga
1996 Paint./col., Collection “Fondo del Ateneo” (Group), Palacio Miramar, Malaga
1996 Paint./graph., “Art Supermarket” (Group), Galería “La buena Estrella”, Malaga
1995 Paint./graph., “La Pasión” (Processions), Mijas
1995 Poster, “Semana Santa”, Mijas
1995 Collages, “Caprichos” in “Eylders”, Amsterdam (NL)
1993 Collages, “Caprichos”, Ateneo de Malaga, Malaga
1993 Paint/graph., “14 Artistas de Mijas”, Lions Club, Mijas
1992 / 93 Paintings, Galería Terral (Group), Malaga
1992 Paintings, Town Hall Exhibition room, Mijas
1992 Paintings, Galería “H”, Marbella
1991 Paintings, Galería “H” (Group), Marbella
1991 Paintings, Ateneo de Malaga, Malaga
1989 Paintings, “La Pasión”, Galería Terral, Malaga

Exhibitions before 1989 (studio in Amsterdam) and more general information about the artist on his website.

www Ernst Kraft
e-mail Ernst Kraft