Rissa
Rissa: Painting 1966–2024.

Opening – 13 SEP 2024, 6-9 pm
13 SEP till 2 NOV 2024

No extended opening hours for Gallery Night incl. Sunday

Rissa in her studio 1998, the monumental “Von der Erde kommend in the background.

Photo: Joachim Lissmann © 2024 Archiv K.O. Götz und Rissa-Stiftung.

Rissa (*1938), who explored Cubism, Expressionism and Art Informel while studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy 1959–1965, opted for figurative painting in 1964. She thus is part of the movement emerging in the early 1960s, which consciously placed figuration back at the centre of attention.

Rissa
Von der Erde kommend, 1994
Oil on canvas, 200 x 260 cm
Courtesy: Kunsthandel Wolfgang Werner / Privatsammlung
Photo: © 2024 Archiv K. O. Götz und Rissa-Stiftung / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

I wish to build a broad foundation for painting so that future generations of artists will again want to devote themselves to figurative painting. For there is still much to be painted. Painting is far from being at an end. 

Rissa, cit. in: catalogue Retrospektive Rissa, MärkischesMuseum, p. 18

Rissa’s artistic concept is based on the idea of creating a future-oriented, object-related painting both in terms of content and form. Her painterly approach relies less on sculptural modelling and the perspective construction of the pictorial space than on the juxtaposition of often small-scale, flat form-colour structures with a smooth application of paint, from the outlines of which the pictorial objects emerge. She developed a colour system quite of her own and is particularly interested in the interaction of the individual fields of colour in the chromatic whole of a picture. Besides, Rissa defined the level of content in 1966: “I wish to depict unusual relationships of objects and actions which might occur in reality but are rarely taken into consideration.”

My pictures are stimuli, they are intended to provoke and to bring about something anew. However, they do not force the observer in a specific direction, neither formally nor in terms of content. 

Rissa, Über meine Malerei 1977, cit. from https://rissa-homepage.de/texte-allgemein/rissa-ueber-meine-malerei-juli-1977

Rissa
Die Tasse, 1969
Oil on canvas, 70 x 60 cm
Courtesy: Kunsthandel Wolfgang Werner /
Privatsammlung
Photo: © 2024 Archiv K.O. Götz und Rissa-Stiftung / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

Rissa, born Karin Martin near Chemnitz in 1938, the family leaving the GDR in 1953.1959–1965 Düsseldorf Art Academy, class of K.O. Götz, whom she marries in 1965. 1975-2007 Professorship at Düsseldorf Art Academy, from 2000 as Vice-Rector. 1977 co-founding the AXIOM group. Latest solo exhibitions 2018 Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Akademie Galerie Düsseldorf.

The fact that Rissa … invented a formal language of her own, which she brings to vibrate with the variety of pure tones and colour clusters, this is her unique contribution to today’s representational painting. 

K.O. Götz, cit. in: catalogue Retrospektive Rissa, Märkisches Museum Witten 1980, p. 18

Rissa
Nachtgewächs, 1996
Oil on canvas, 160 x 130 cm
Courtesy: Kunsthandel Wolfgang Werner / Privatsammlung
Photo: © 2024 Archiv K.O. Götz und Rissa-Stiftung / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

For the first time, we are extensively presenting the very special work of the painter Rissa in Berlin with important paintings. The selection covers the years 1966–2024 thus offering a view on her beginnings, marked by Pop Art impulses, up to more recent works in which current topics are readily incorporated.