Jean-Pierre Kunkel was born in France in 1950. Studied painting at the Academy of Art in Munich and the Kunsthochschule am Lerchenfeld in Hamburg. Has worked for 40 years as a freelance advertising illustrator and painter specializing in photorealism in Hamburg. In the first creative phases stays in Paris and New York. There he worked as an assistant to the famous art activist Jean-Paul Goude, who from then on had a decisive influence on his photorealistic way of working. Quote: “For me, it’s not about competing with the precision of a camera lens and transferring a snapshot 1:1 onto the canvas. Rather, I am interested in the possibilities of giving the reality of the photograph a completely different effect. By playing with color intensities, light reflections, and surface textures, I create a new reality. Painting enables me to intensify the uniqueness of the moments that I have previously captured with the camera and adapt them to my own ideal.