Grit Richter

Born in 1977 in Dresden, Germany, Grit Richter first studied painting and graphics at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts (HfBK Dresden) and then at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg (HFBK Hamburg) under the tutelage of Anna Gudjónsdóttir and Norbert Schwontkowski. Since her graduation in 2007 she had at least once a year a solo exhibition in various German cities and had in 2019 a solo presentation by her gallery Tanja Wagner at The Armory Show in New York. Moreover, she participated in numerous group shows, mainly in Germany, but also in London, Lapua (Finland) and New York.

Grit was awarded with several grants such as a Project Grant by the cultural office of Hamburg, a Working Grant for Visual Arts of the City of Hamburg and a DAAD Travel Grand for Vienna. Additionally, she was nominated for the Villa Aurora Fellowship. From 2015 to 2018, she was lecturer for painting at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg (HAW).

Coming from painting, Grit expanded her artistic vocabulary to other techniques for example textile dyeing and bleaching and sculpture. Likewise, her early more figurative images became more and more abstract, including some figurative elements. Her artistic research is about the possibility to represent emotions, remembrance or the unconscious. In her oeuvre, she translates her investigation into a compressed, reduced visual language. Thereby, the abstract forms become a projection surface and a kind of figurative placeholder.*

In practice, this might be bright coloured oil paintings, arisen from preliminary sketches and / or computer based simulations or more experimental images, made on pre-treated surfaces. There are huge paper collages and wall paintings as well as pigmented plaster and concrete sculptures. Neon sculptures including glass, used wood, acrylic glass or bitumen belong to her oeuvre like fabric works and sculptures. In 2018, she made her first series of soft sculptures. Others should follow. One of this new fabric figures is our artwork of the month / November 2020: “Fatigue Mom (02)”. It is part of Grit’s series “Fatigue Mom” where she reflected on the contradictory emotions of parents.

These sentiments were even stronger in the exceptional situation of the lockdown due to the pandemic in spring 2020. It extremely affected family life and the relationship between mother and child. Hence, Grit’s artistic expression of her feelings. Until now, the series contains three works. (01) is a mattress with cords, formed like a seat as a mother might take her child held on her lap; (02) reminds prehistoric fertility figurines by the two superposed spheres and (03) is once again a mattress with cords, but this one lies exhausted on the floor and leans a bit on the wall. These three initial versions of “Fatigue Mom” were shown for the first time to the public in the solo exhibition “Mixed Feelings” during the Berlin Gallery Weekend in September and later during the Frieze digital in October 2020, both featured by the Galerie Tanja Wagner.

Grit lives and works in Hamburg, Germany.