Katharina Grosse
Katharina Grosse is a German visual artist. She is known for her large-scale, site-related installations to create immersive visual experiences. Grosse's work employs a use of architecture, sculpture, and painting. She has been using an industrial paint-sprayer to apply prismatic swaths of color to a variety of surfaces since the late 1990s, and often uses bright, unmixed sprayed-on acrylic paints to create both large-scale sculptural elements and smaller wall works.
Early life and education
Grosse was born in 1961 in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany, but grew up in the Ruhr region, where her artist mother and linguist father exposed her to theater and dance from a young age.Grosse studied at the from 1982 to 1986, and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1986 to 1990. In subsequent years, she completed artist-in-residence programs at the Villa Romana in Florence, Italy ; Chinati Foundation in Marfa, USA ; Elam School of Fine Art in Auckland, New Zealand ; and Headlands Center for the Arts in San Francisco, USA.
Work
Grosse maintains studios in Berlin's Moabit district, Auckland and Groß Kreutz.In 2004, Grosse sprayed the bedroom of her Düsseldorf flat — including the bed, floor and the clothes, books and shoes strewn across it — in rainbow-hued acrylics. More monumental interventions followed, including in 2015, when she installed three massive trees in the Museum Wiesbaden’s neoclassical hall, their paint-drenched roots dazzlingly exposed. Rockaway, a project with MoMA PS1, saw Grosse thickly spray painting an abandoned US Army bathhouse and part of the surrounding beach on New York’s Rockaway peninsula.
Commissions
Grosse has been commissioned with various site-specific installations, including for the Federal Labour Court in Erfurt Gate 122 of Terminal 1 at Toronto Pearson International Airport in Toronto, the German Parliament in Berlin and the Messeplatz at Art Basel.Other activities
Grosse taught at the Weißensee Academy of Art from 2000 to 2010. She was a professor of painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 2010 to 2018. She was a member of the juries that selected Hito Steyerl as recipient of the Käthe Kollwitz Prize and Sheela Gowda of the Maria Lassnig Prize.Since 2021, Grosse has been chairing the board of KW Institute for Contemporary Art. In this capacity, she was part of the search committee that chose Emma Enderby as the KW's new director in 2023.
Art market
Grosse is represented by Galerie Max Hetzler and Gagosian Gallery. She previously worked with Johann König until 2022.Personal life
Grosse is in a relationship with artist Judy Millar. She has been living and working in Berlin since 2000. In 2005, she purchased a former supermarket in Berlin's Friedrichshain district and turned it into her primary residence.Public commissions (selected)
Untitled, Greater Toronto Airports Authority Seven Days Time, Kunstmuseum Bonn Blue Orange, Vara Bahnhof, Sweden Just Two Of Us, MetroTech Commons, Public Art Fund, New York Untitled, Ehrenhof Düsseldorf Untitled, The Cologne Public Transport Company - KVB, stop Chlodwigplatz, Cologne Untitled, Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus, Berlin Untitled, Washington University in St. Louis, MO, USA Rockaway!, for MoMA PS1, Fort Tilden, NY Mural, for Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MACollections
Grosse's work is held in several permanent collections, including the following:- Museum of Modern Art, New York
- QAGOMA, Brisbane, Australia
- Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
- Pomeranz Collection
- Collection Société Générale
Awards
- Villa Romana Prize, Florence, Italy
- Schmidt-Rottluff Stipend, Germany
- Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn, Germany
- Chinati Foundation's artist-in-residence program, Marfa, Texas, USA
- Artist-in-residence at Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland, New Zealand
- Artist-in-residency award, Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California, USA
- Fred Thieler Award, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany
- Oskar-Schlemmer-Award, Great State Prize for Visual Arts of Baden-Wuerttemberg
- Otto-Ritschl-Kunstpreis