Artists

Galli

Press release

The artist Galli was born in Saarland in 1944. After completing her basic apprenticeship at the Werkkunstschule in Saarbrücken with Oscar Holweck, she moved to Berlin in 1969 where she studied under and later became the master student of the Dutch artist and graphic designer Martin Engelmann, who was influenced by the Cobra Group. Galli’s arrival to Berlin aligned with the '68 uprisings in German in which political provocation, awakening, and upheaval expanded beyond the university. At the beginning of the 1980s, the Neuen Wilden movement developed in Germany and Austria, a group mainly dominated by men, to which Galli likes to be assigned, but which she consciously distanced herself from in her painting.

Galli’s paintings are populated by literal monsters. They dwell in forests and dreams, inhabit empty houses and bare rooms. Sometimes, all that is visible are arms, legs, hooves, and claws. Their bodies appear to have amalgamated from various animal, human, or mythological creatures. Within this cosmos, extremes converge: sublimity and ordinariness, cruelty and vulnerability, pain and ecstasy.

Curated by Annabell Burger, M.A.