Born on the 17_th of November 1954, (practically under the counter of our little store, my mother however managed to make it to our red divan, a nice piece of furniture for giving birth to an artist) in Esch/Alzette, Luxemburg.

When I was nine months old, I ran like a bat out of hell, when I was 20 months old, polio stopped me in my tracks and slowed down my ability to move all the way until I could not move at all anymore. From then on I had a lot of time and leisure to observe my environment from the perspective of a reptile. Perhaps that is why I became an artist, my eyes moved more intensively than my legs.

After 6 years of Volksschule (elementary school/primary school), my parents pushed me into a Gymnasium (high school/secondary school), I wanted to be a blacksmith. After 2 years, I left, with mutual understanding, i.e. I left, and was also glad to leave the gymnasium. A gypsy woman told my mother of a prophecy before I was borne that she would give birth to a son who would give her great joy but also great misery and sorrows.

After Gymnasium in Esch, a hideous school, with pedagogy like from the nineteenth century, a one year job in a hardware store, humane, cheerful people as colleagues, and the boss, a former priest was also very easy to get along with, perhaps because he was Belgian, a country where I always met people at fun drinking and eating parties, equipped with a solid sense of humor and common sense. I then made my way to this promised land, from 1971-1974 I was at the Arts et Techniques Artisanales institute, in Namur (Belgium), drawing, sculpture and printing techniques.

After that again a year in the hardware store, and another, they were so impressed with me that they wanted to make the head clerk, too over the top for me, and I set off for Germany after a year, to the Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste Karlsruhe (State Academy of the Fine Arts Karlsruhe), 1975-1981, not officially enrolled, since I had botched the admission test twice, but was kindly tolerated as a guest student by the professors, I am very grateful to this academy, its professors, and its teachers. I had good times in Karlsruhe, la Boheme. Finally there were also women who appreciated me as a man and friend, this continued to be denied to me in Luxemburg, the Luxembourgian girls also had a very distinct taste in men at that time, I unfortunately did not fit the bill. At the academy: Drawing, stone and wood sculpture, casting techniques, etching and painting techniques: Professor Hans Kindermann, sculpture, Professor William Loth, sculpture, Professor Hiromi Akyama, sculpture, Professor Overkott, painting techniques, Master Willi Seidel, etching.

From 1978-1981, student at the Kunstschule Mannheim (the Mannheim School of Arts), etching, lithography, woodcut printing with Karl Rödel, Painter, Sculptor, Woodcutter, Etcher, Lithographer, Artist and Friend.

I have been a freelance artist since 1981 in Luxemburg and France.

I see myself and my work in the great tradition of the plastic and graphic arts, which are often declared dead and yet are still very alive, in other words, I am not a communication monkey and also not a media clown, but rather an artist who works with the old techniques. I carve pictures out of stone and wood, forge and weld with iron and steel, draw with drawing pencils and drawing ink, paint in oils, mold with plaster of Paris and clay, lithograph on stone, carve wayside shrines on wood and linoleum, etch on copper and zinc. My themes are human, animal, landscape, plants. The female body takes precedence.

Max Kohn

Ozerailles (France), January 2010