Born in 1945 in the pre-alpine Allgäu region of South Germany, Manfred Scharpf learned the area's cultural heritage of ancient painting
techniques in its churches. He still employs these in contemporary themes today, preserving this heritage for future generations. Manfred
Scharpf has been an independent artist since 1974 and has worked with highly-acclaimed exhibition concepts in Europe and the United States.
After creating paintings with provocatively beautiful natural motifs and themes from a wide range of socially taboo areas, he then devoted
his time to the theme of "Conjunctio Europae" which he interpreted in his art.
In 2008 he started the cycle "Weihrauchs böse Bilder" (Incense's Wicked Pictures) in which he hones our perception of the challenges
of our times. Goethe's Faust and his dialectic with Mephisto form the literary basis for the latest work of the artist - Faust succumbs to
his fate and at the end celebrates his failure and total betrayal of the world, blind and without insight. Scharpf regards himself as a "bad
boy", as Mephisto, who takes the liberty of expressing the plights of our world in a proverbial Faustian nutshell.
His initial works "Schlüsselerlebnis" (Key Experience) and "Ebracher Triptychon" (Triptych of Ebrach), which he created
simultaneously as part of a joint project with young people in the prison of Ebrach in Bavaria on the basis of their narratives, had a particularly
deep effect on him. The works of the cycle shatteringly document our society and its excesses such as violence, drugs and fraud.
However, in spite of the focus on problematic topics, his painted satire is always interwoven with hope.
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