ARTICles and art critics

Dino was my teacher - I also wrote that in different contexts - and as such he gave me a basis that I can never forget. He taught me the importance of the "synthesis" I needed – that was in 1968-1969 - and the "francature". I accompanied him on several expeditions to paint from life and he hosted me many times in his studio.

I got to know him well. He was a little crazy ... but it was the consequence of a mad passion for art. He was obsessed with being "modern" but he esteemed artists like Favretto ("the most beautiful blacks and whites of the Italian nineteenth century!") And he greatly admired Giuseppe Novello.

.. without a doubt, I owe him a lot and I will always be grateful to him. He was a fundamental figure for my whole way of "seeing" paintings, not only as a painter but also as a critic and expert.

He enriched my life.

                                                                                                              Paul Nicholls

                                                                                                              Milan, 27.04.2021

At first glance, Krumm's works have a character of research and modernity supported by his energetic and vigorous style, even though his chosen themes are still quite traditional: figure compositions, landscapes and still lifes. This element of tradition brings a quality of universality to his paintings and if we judge them to be modern, this is the result of contemporary solutions to traditional themes rather than any direct referencing of the themes to our contemporary world.
His works encapsulate how he observes the world around him, and how he captures it with rapid strokes, to fix objects already in their given synthesis, devoid of any detail. Memory retains visual fragments and recreates them. Echoes of Cubism, surely, but accompanied by a greater softness of passages, as well as less interest in purely intellectual reconstruction.
Tonality plays a big part, and is an essential key to the artist’s interpretation. For years Krumm has been exploring tonal possibilities and modules of composition developing his great capacity for construction on multiple planes. This ambiguity in the planes increases the levels of play in each painting and sustains our interest. The aspect of decomposition and partial destruction of forms, another characteristic of Krumm's style, produces a mysterious but powerful tension. The tonal key provides an immediate invitation to delve into an arrangement of seemingly abstract forms while their destruction causes the work to be enriched with new visual syntheses.
In this respect, it is instructive to observe the painter at work. Krumm begins his painting with a series of vague, tonally linked forms, which the eye examines while the mind decides whether to accept, destroy or elaborate them. The resulting abstract pictorial game is then gradually modified until it reaches the meaning intended by the painter.
Krumm's paintings are thus discoveries; they are not executed according to pre-conceived schemes, but emerge from a process of direct creation. This simultaneity of creation and execution gives Krumm's work an intensity that can be felt even before the figurative meaning is explored. Seen objects and painted objects converge in these syntheses, explicative themes of a language that seeks new aspects and unsettling angles to recreate the world through continuous formal/objective referencing.
Drawn lines then help anchor the works, to achieve the ideal classical balance; just a few, bare lines suggest and explain the painting. The result is a rhythm based on the values of precise determination of the pictorial planes, tonal richness and drawing. The exhibition lets us approach this sensitive artist and his poetic world, through an understanding of his coherent, effective language.

Paul Nicholls

Galleria Sant'Ambrogio

15 November – 4 December 1969

Krumm believes that the dominant feature of our time is the synthesis and therefore the rapidity of appearance and observation of all the images that populate and chase each other in our existence. From here arises a fantastic relationship, abstract but lyrically relived by the artist's original sensitivity. (..) it will not be difficult to recognize in him, from time to time, coincidences with Cubism, with Expressionism, even with certain moments of Futurism, as well as more recent connections with an abstract and informal Expressionism.

Krumm is no one's epigone: he has invented his own world, one that cannot ignore certain factors which determine its figurative aspects. Yet, if you look closely, his analogies with Cubism are corrected by a greater softness of line, shape, light: as if the intellectualistic structure of that movement has been attenuated by a pathetic human presence (..).

                                                                                                                     Anno 1966

                                                                                                                     Mario Monteverdi

                                                                                                                     Painter and art critic