"It’s hard to get across just how important this man is in just a few sentences, but it must be done. Mati Klarwein was the man literally responsible for every great, legendary record cover you’ll see — if he didn’t do it, he inspired it. A student of a Jerusalem art school at the age of 15, Mati began incorporating his spiritual beliefs into the images he was creating of the mountainous landscape he felt such affinity with. Brief spells in Paris, Mallorca and St.Tropez cemented his style and he soon became legendary for the trippy, erotic scenes he was able to produce unlike anyone else. Timothy Leary (who loved drugs) once said of Mati that he was one of the only artists at the time who 'didn’t need psychedelics.'
Just as free love started to kick off, Mati became the go-to man for record sleeves, portraits and murals, some of which you could probably look at for 100 years and still not get tired of. His ability to capture an entire era in these wild, flowing images (he was friends with Salvador Dali) is something that puts him right up there with Hendrix and John Bonham and the hundreds of others that helped make the 1960s and 70s so immortally iconic."INT
Such an inspiration!
