I came across this particular artist whilst visiting Frieze in London. Sabine Moritz was born in 1969 in Quedlinburg which at the time was within the soviet controlled area of Germany. Her family did not move to west Germany until 1985 and the years before this heavily effected her as a young girl and this went on to reflect in her art work. Today she lives and works in Cologne in Germany. During her studies of art she took up a class with Gerhard Richter and she was in fact the last pupil to do so before Richter stopped teaching in 1994. Moritz began to appear in Richter's work and they went on to marry each other shortly after this period. Moritz did a great deal of drawing throughout her studies but afterwards she began to use other materials including; pencil, charcoal, water colour and oil as well as also beginning to producing paintings using oil and acrylic on canvas. Themes that run throughout her work are ones of architecture, urban planning, public and private spaces and also childhood.
The painting I saw in Frieze was one of her most recent paintings 'Stalingrad' done in 2013 in oil on canvas. What I find most interesting about Moritz' work is her use of texture and application of paint to the canvas. Mark making appears to be a key ingredient to her work and I think that her use of marks create a strong atmosphere that helps to reflect the scene being depicted. Her paintings are slightly distorted due to this creating a blurred effect adding a sense of movement and life and in some cases an idea that it is raining. I feel inspired by this to try and produce movement in my paint work by applying the paint in a certain way to distort the image somehow or to add textures to my ideas.
(Stalingrad, 2013, oil on canvas, 58 x 72 cm)
