Pastel, 2023

Albrecht Behmel  

Albrecht Behmel has a talent for canvas and paper. Novelist, historian, best-selling non-fiction author, essayist, screenwriter and award-winning playwright, the multi-talented Behmel leaves a strong mark on all his media. Albrecht studied in Heidelberg and Berlin. His creative path has taken many twists and turns. He has designed board games, puppets and marionettes and worked as a curator for primitive art in Heidelberg, eventually quitting his job as a business consultant to pursue his art full-time. After gifting one of his early works to Silicon Valley entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki, who loved the piece, Albrecht realised he could forge a successful career as a painter.

Albrecht’s unique painting style known as The Magic of the Swarm has found fans and collectors between London, NYC, Milan, Berlin and Beijing. The Magic of the Swarm or Abstrahism are terms Albrecht has coined to express the mix of abstract forms stemming from real-world shapes that populate his colourful canvases, just like a shadow abstractly represents a 3-D body on a 2-D surface. Abstrahism is, he says, about the connectedness of all beings however different they may seem - like in a kaleidoscope where known forms melt into something new every time they move. “Once I have established a net of shapes and outlines on canvas I add powerful acrylic colours (they poison me less than oil) following an algorithm in my mind: As in a musical fugue I create an interweaving pattern of main themes, parts and variations within a grid of shapes and silhouettes.” As a child Behmel was fascinated by Albrecht Dürer’s work, later Kirchner, Kandinsky, Keith Haring and El Greco.

Albrecht is the founder (and 2008-2012 host) of Berliner Filmforum, a business club and network for film and media artists. He enjoys nature in the Black Forest in southwest Germany where he lives with his family and spends time in London, Paris and Berlin