Born 1956 in Bienebeck, Germany, studied design and painting with Professor Manfried Grossmann at the Fachhochschule für Gestaltung (University of Art and Design) in Hamburg (Germany). She graduated in 1981 as book illustrator and left Germany to become assistant in Andy Warhol’s Factory in New York. Besides she opened her studio as painter and had soon her first exhibitions in the city, but as well in England and Germany.
1984, back in Hamburg Ingeborg got the commission for a cycle of images for the church Sankt Katharinen, her first project where she had to deal as well with space. “Weg ins Licht” (Way into the Light) inspired the Polish composer Augustyn Bloch to the religious oratorio “Denn Dein Licht kommt” (And Your Light Cometh), premiered 1988 in Sankt Katharinen. This was the point of departure for a longstanding cooperation on the base that Ingeborg perceives music as colours and Augustyn Bloch thought of colours having their own sound.
In addition to her individual works, she often realises religious projects for sacral edifices. One of them is the chapel Sa Barrala, Majorca, Spain, where she designed in 2002 the entire interior space. The religious aspect in her works is due to her artistic research. Ingeborg doesn’t want to tell a story with her paintings. It is more a research of the eternal truth, about the essence which is behind things and life. It is up to the viewer “to be free enough to comprehend my work of art on an individual scale.” she stated on her website.
In consequence the paintings are abstract. They are the result of a concentrated work on colours on a picture surface. Some gestures of the painter might be spontaneous, but essentially the colours are put in by the intention to find a new, consistent expression. Thereby, she let herself be guided by the image itself. This method might be as well one of the reasons for her preference of huge formats: it gives her intense colours the possibility to extend and communicate, without disturbing each other. So the genesis of her paintings is a long one. Generally Ingeborg works on several paintings at the same time, often series. Nevertheless, each part of a sequence has to stand on its own.
Since her first exhibition in 1982, Ingeborg had an enormous number of individual and group exhibitions. Besides her initial exposing countries United States, England and Germany her shows are situated in Poland, Russia, Spain, France, China, Lithuania, Iceland and Morocco. In 2014 her works were first presented in Bologna by the Berlin based Werkstattgalerie at the SetUp Art Fair. A year later she was back in the group exhibition “Macrocosmi Bologna” at the CUBO Unipol Center Bologna. Currently her works are to be seen once again in the same city at the Spazio Testoni. Here they are in dialogue with in situ wall paintings by Ester Grossi where they can communicate “Deep down inside the Color” (until 26 March 2016).
www.ingeborg-zu-schleswig-holstein.org
Spazio Testoni
(in cooperation with the Werkstattgalerie Berlin)
Via D’Azeglio 50, Bologna
www.spaziotestoni.it
www.werkstattgalerie.org
16 January – 26 March 2016
Ingeborg zu Schleswig-Holstein & Ester Grossi: Deep down inside the Color