Klasen was born in Lubeck Germany in 1935. He studies at the School of Fine Arts in Berlin from 1956-1959. He moves to Paris at the beginning of the 60’s. Klasen quickly becomes one of the most well-known artists of the New Figuration movement with Adami, Erro, etc, of which he is the founder.

Klasen makes a point of processing the paradox and the hyper reality of objects and mass media images that become the most basic form of life. This way he denounces, by pictural metaphors, the uniformity of the context of western life and elaborates into a personal plastic language our society.

His motifs might be a close-up image of a pipe, a truck, an ambulance, or reinterpretations of signs of our urban environment and more generally. His art is identifiable, colourful, easily legible by all and due to his methodical attention to detail, Klasen's work conveys a photographic quality. Indeed, it is this "deconcealing" of the danger that is hidden within the banal that marks the real force of Klasen's work.

Klasen offers images, paintings and graphic works, in order to provoke a reflection on the world that surrounds us, a critical reflection. Klasen, master of contrast, finds a balance between the sensual and the industrial, putting the ambiguity of situations and thus humans, under the regard to everyone. His works are viewed on gallery walls of international museums and important galleries in Germany, Italy, France, Spain, the United States, etc.