Rissa
Painting 1966–2024

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'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.«
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. In 1972, in co-operation with K.O. Götz, she published »Probleme der Bildästhetik. Eine Einführung in das anschauliche Denken.« 1977 co-founding the AXIOM group. Solo exhibitions: 1968 Suermondt-Ludwig Museum, Aachen; 1972 Kunsthalle Düsseldorf; 1985 Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund; 2003 Küppersmühle, Duisburg; 2018 Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz, Akademie Galerie Düsseldorf.