Sabine Moritz

Sabine Moritz is a contemporary German artist whose work constitutes poignant explorations of memory, identity, and the human experience. Moritz's artistic journey is a testament to her ability to translate personal narratives into universal expressions of emotion and introspection.

Born in 1969, in Quedlinburg in East Germany, Moritz's upbringing during the Cold War era played a pivotal role in shaping her artistic sensibilities. Growing up in a divided nation and moving to West Germany in 1985, she witnessed the stark contrast between East and West Germany, sparking a fascination with memory, history, and the passage of time. Moritz began her artistic education at Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach/Main in 1989, before enrolling at the renowned Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1991. Under the mentorship of influential artists like Markus Lüpertz and Gerhard Richter, Moritz honed her craft and developed a distinctive artistic voice.

A hallmark of Moritz's art is her ability to merge the deeply personal with the universally relatable. She uses her art as a means of delving into her own memories and emotions, capturing fleeting moments and imbuing them with a profound sense of nostalgia and melancholy. The extensive series ‘Lobeda’, which Moritz began in 1991 and extended in 2004, gathers more than 150 drawings exploring her memories of growing up in Lobeda, a cluster of concrete housing blocks near the city of Jena.

Moritz's preferred mediums include drawing, painting, and printmaking. Her drawings of spaces are often characterised by fleeting perspectives, observed in the ‘Lobeda’ series as well as those published in the 2011 book ‘Jena Düsseldorf’. The ‘Jena Düsseldorf’ drawings are further not solely produced from memory, but also with the help of photographic materials. While always representational some of her drawings and paintings demand the beholder to look closely as their objects are obfuscated through a characteristic brushwork that creates the impression of flickering.

Moritz's work has also often grappled with broader historical and cultural themes. Her series of drawings and paintings of helicopters, created between 2002 and 2013, show said helicopters mid-flight, some depicted in detail and others obscured through dynamic brushstrokes. Based on newspaper and television images, the helicopter works don’t reflect a particular event, but grapple with notions of conflict and war in the past and present. In these works, Moritz engages with history's collective memory, using art as a medium to process and convey the horrors of warfare and human suffering.

Moritz has published several books curating her works and confronting them with texts and poems. These books, such as ‘Roses’ (2010), ‘Lilies and Objects’ (2011), and ‘Helicopter’ (2014) allow her audience to behold her works closely and intimately. Her work has been exhibited in prestigious galleries and museums worldwide, including Marian Goodman Gallery in New York and Paris, Fondation De 11 Lijnen in Oudenburg, Belgium, and the Von der Heydt Kunsthalle Wuppertal, Germany.

Moritz's journey as an artist has been marked by a deep commitment to introspection and a relentless exploration of the human condition. Through her art, she invites viewers to confront their own memories, emotions, and experiences, encouraging them to grapple with the complex interplay between the personal and the collective. In a world where the past constantly informs the present, Moritz's work serves as a poignant reminder of the power of art to transcend time and connect us to the shared tapestry of human existence.