Norbert Bisky German, b. 1970

Works
Biography
Norbert Bisky
Norbert Bisky (b. 1970, Leipzig) is one of the most renowned figurative painters in Germany today. Raised in the former East Germany, Bisky decided to become an artist after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He studied painting at the Berlin University of the Arts in the class of Georg Baselitz. During his studies, he spent an academic year at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Universidad Complutense in Madrid and joined the class of Jim Dine in the Salzburg Summer Academy.
 
Bisky creates exuberant, vividly colorful paintings through which he explores the intertwining of Communism, religion, and the State. Influenced in part by the mandated, propagandistic Socialist Realist imagery with which he grew up, Bisky states: "For an artist it is fascinating to have a world in your mind [that] does not exist anymore. I grew up with all these images of happy people, all these religious promises. [. . .] It has a lot to do with my work because I try to paint those images of paradise and to see if it could really live up to the promise."
 
Influenced by the changes brought about by the pandemic, Bisky's more recent works present aggregated and disaggregated bodies, either in action or in states of free-fall, symbolizing the loss of support structures in today's world. Clocks, smartphones, surveillance cameras, and familiar Berlin landmarks such as public dustbins are recurrent motifs, elements of an urban environment marked by instability and change. Apocalyptic visions of collapsing towers and climate-related disasters evoke sensations of unsustainable acceleration and a distrust of any unified understanding of reality. Despite the chaos, peaceful free-falling figures evoke the possibility of an alternate world, marked by calm, unity and peace. 
 
Beneath the striking surface of its painterly qualities, a deep undercurrent of ideas, stories, and impressions characterize Bisky's work, addressing the major challenges of our time and establishing Bisky as one of the most committed and powerful voices in contemporary European art.
 
Download Artist's CV (PDF, opens in a new tab.)
Exhibitions
Video
Installation shots
Press