Picture "The Maid" (2022) (Unique piece)
Picture "The Maid" (2022) (Unique piece)
Quick info
unique piece | signed | dated | mixed media on linen | unframed | size 220 x 180 cm
Detailed description
Picture "The Maid" (2022) (Unique piece)
Acrylic, asphalt varnish, shellac on linen, 2022. Signed and dated. Unframed. Size stretched on stretcher frame 220 x 180 cm.
About Cornelia Schleime
The art of Cornelia Schleime, born in Berlin in 1953, is characterised by a delightful tendency towards exaggeration. Her artistic means are impressively diverse, whether painting, music, literature or film.
Cornelia Schleime is one of the best-known German painters of her generation. In addition to painting, she is also artistically active as a photographer, filmmaker, performer and author. Schleime was born in East Berlin and studied graphic art and painting at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. However, she was banned by the GDR government from exhibiting in 1981 and obtained permission to leave the GDR in 1984. Schleime was only able to take a few of her works with her so that a large part of her early work is now considered lost.
Especially her portraits are much admired. Since the 1990s, she has been bringing her protagonists closer and closer. She develops haunting portraits of women and children, couples kissing, lascivious nuns, even the Pope. With an inquiring gaze, the artist approaches the face, the ever-changing countenance of the human being – it becomes wrapped, veiled, sometimes with a mask.
Schleime has received numerous scholarships and awards. Her paintings are part of collections worldwide, such as the Gemäldegalerie der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen, Dresden and the Getty Museum, Los Angeles. She lives and works in Berlin, in Ruppiner Land and on La Palma.
A one-of-a-kind or unique piece is a work of art that has been personally created by the artist. It exists only once due to the type of production (oil painting, watercolours, drawing, etc.).
In addition to the classic unique pieces, there exist the so-called "serial unique pieces". They present a series of works with the same colour, motif and technique, manually prepared by the same artist. The serial unique pieces are rooted in "serial art", a type of modern art, that aims to create an aesthetic effect through series, repetitions and variations of the same objects or themes or a system of constant and variable elements or principles.
In the history of arts, the starting point of this trend was the work "Les Meules" (1890/1891) by Claude Monet, in which for the first time a series was created that went beyond a mere group of works. The other artists, who addressed to the serial art, include Claude Monet, Piet Mondrian and above all Gerhard Richter.