Katharina Fritsch - Studies with Fritz Schwegler; commitment to figurative sculpture
Katharina Fritsch was born in Essen, Germany on 14 February 1956. The daughter of an architect, she initially studied history and art history in Münster, but broke off her studies prematurely in 1977 in order to replace what she considered the dry theory with a practical approach. With this goal in mind, Katharina Fritsch went to Düsseldorf, where she studied under Fritz Schwegler at the art academy. During her studies, the artist was already able to present her first sculptures to the public, and she achieved international breakthrough in 1984, immediately after completing her studies, when she took part in the highly acclaimed exhibition Von hier aus - Zwei Monate neue deutsche Kunst in Düsseldorf. From the very beginning, Katharina Fritsch was committed to figurative art, whereby her reduced, symbolic, monochrome-coloured animals, hands, umbrellas and skulls soon took on considerable proportions. In 1987, her elephant caused a sensation on the international art scene and became the subject of lively discussion in European and American specialist journals and encouraged the artist to create her sculptures in a monumental format.
Her own path to success through colour and large format
Katharina Fritsch opted for large-format, life-size sculptures or even went beyond them, but simplified the level of detail in her works and limited herself to a single shade of colour in order to emphasise the form as the essential factor. In doing so, the choice of colour is not left to chance or the whim of the artist, but serves as an important identifying feature. Fritsch owed her special relationship with colour to her grandfather, who worked as a dealer for Faber-Castell and always kept what little Katharina saw as an overwhelmingly large supply of paint. With her own style of expression, Katharina Fritsch consciously set herself apart from the prevailing trends of the artistic mainstream, following neither the guidelines of Minimal Art nor Conceptual Art. Her success proved the artist right early on: in 1988, she presented one of her most famous works, the sculpture Tischgesellschaft (Company at Table) which shows men at a table and is one of the most photographed exhibits at the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt today.
Controversial and celebrated premieres in London and Venice
Katharina Fritsch also benefits from the possibilities of modern technology in her work, working with less traditional materials such as Plexiglas and plastic. Perhaps her most famous work was shown at the Venice Biennale: Rattenkönig (Rat King) consisted of a huge ball of black polyester rats. Her blue Hahn (Cockerel), which she was permitted to set up in the venerable Trafalgar Square in London, was not without controversy - the garish colour and the linguistic ambiguity of the word cock provoked numerous critical voices. Katharina Fritsch has received prizes and awards for her art, including the Piepenbrock Prize of 50,000 euros in 2008. The artist is a member of the German Artists' Association and the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts.
Katharina Fritsch lives and works in Düsseldorf where she holds a professorship in sculpture.
Katharina Fritsch - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
