Katharina Grosse – Lainey Crawford

Katharina Grosse is a German artist born in 1961 who combines a wide array of bright colors with architecture, sculpture, and paintings to create massive visual installations. Before her career took flight, she studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. There, she pursued a degree in painting. She now teaches at the university, but continues to explore and display her artistic ability.

Though considered a painter and sculptor, traditional painting is not what she is known for. Her techniques primarily consist of spray paint to create a specific movement among her pieces. The ideas that may come to mind when viewing Grosse’s works may resemble psychedelics as the color schemes and motions present are extremely captivating. Her installations have lead to major accomplishments and awards, such as the Oskar Schlemmer Prize, Fred-Thieler-Preis, Stipendiaten der Stiftung Kunstfonds, and the Villa-Romana-Stipendium, Florence. Her works have been displayed in a multiple museums, such as the De Pont Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland.

Grosse often calls psychology into question as her works challenges the reality of things as her pieces are much larger than what you would normally see. Viewers are immersed in a world of art that physically surrounds them rather than sits on a wall to be stared at. Her work can be described as an environment as so much space can be taken up, but these environments explore hard-to-imagine dimensions and illusions, greying the line between imagination and reality as viewers can almost be swallowed by the works. Grosse is a very unique artist that utilizes a space in a very engaging and intense way using a multitude of colors and forms that sometimes include furniture and often contrast each other.