Marina Bretschneider Bio 2008

Marina Bretschneider lives and works in Montalto (Liguria, Italy) keeping a close connection to Cologne and San Francisco; her native city and her favourite. From 1976 until 1984 she studied painting with Dieter Krämer and Karl Marx at the Cologne Academy of Fine Arts, the Kölner Werkschulen, which is sort of legendary these days. Karl Marx, the maverick of expressive figurative painting was elected forerunner and father figure of the new style of German paintings in the early eighties, the „New Wild Ones“ (Neue Wilde) - style marks which can be seen reflected in Marina Bretschneider’s early works. Two terms of study in Florence had a lasting effect on her creativity and career as an artist. Marina Bretschneider could be taken as an anachronistic artist, since for her art and life intertwine, are closely interwoven. She is an artist who does not work on the basis of conceptualism, but from a level of supreme intuition. Thus is it not a big surprise that the formal and topical development of her artistry is in parallel with her personal process of maturing and experience. Her affection to Italy made her undergo a subtle metamorphosis: Her state of being is creative, it’s nearly safe to say easy-going. That way she designs a huge sculpture, some sort of Siren, and at the same time develops the interior decoration of a house which is five hundred years old, and which is then equipped according to her ideas. Marina Bretschneider’s artistry is comprehensive, new materials are tested, interiors are decorated, the favoured issues in her paintings, however, have not changed: Dealing with deep human experiences of birth, the interpretation of life and death which is unescapable. Painting occurs to her from a quasi different state of consciousness. From this state her painting develops into an aggregation of what is characteristic for the artist’s personality: spiritedness and vitality. Given that this is also reflected in the expressive concept of her paintings, it is exactly what features the specific quality and truthfullness of Marina Bretschneider’s artistry. Dr. Maria Linnsmann, Burg Wissem Museum, Troisdorf