Ralph Fleck (born 1951, Freiburg, Germany) lives and works in Freiburg and Soller. Formerly Professor of Painting at the Nuremberg Academy his work is represented in many public collections including the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlung Munich; Kunsthaus Zürich; Sprengel Museum Hannover; Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum Duisburg. In 2015 a major retrospective of his work was held at the Museum Küppersmühle Duisburg.
As a student Ralph Fleck had a teacher who insisted that nothing was unworthy of being painted. It is a credo he has stuck with, creating his own painterly language which involves movement between moments of close observation and of objective distance.
Every inch of a painting’s surface is important to him and each is painted with the same absorption and intensity. It is vital that the brush marks are both raw and immediate. When he paints book stacks, or a city, it is the idea of books or a city; something of their essence, rather than their particularity, that is captured in paint. However intuitive a painting may appear, its journey is rarely haphazard, but part of a process of looking and a continuing dialogue with the material of paint.
`Eugene Delacroix once revered the riot of colours in his journal as a “feast for the eyes” which is what one experiences when standing in front of Fleck’s paintings, as if attending a costume ball of things. Fleck invites the viewer to take part – to help themselves, when he serves up pieces of cake; to listen to silence, when he sets off to snowy landscapes; or to join in the cheering of a standing crowd'. (Tilman Allert)