Sabine Finkenauer

The general theme of Sabine Finkenauer's work is, to use the artist’s own words, “simple things”. Finkenauer, born in 1961 in the city of Rockenhausen, Germany, has lived and worked in Barcelona since 1993. After her training at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, she specialized in sculpture, although in the early 1980s, when she had already settled in Barcelona, ​​her work took a turn towards painting.

Sometimes her canvases and drawings are made up of objects such as furniture, dresses, plants, architecture or mountains. She also depicts figures from childhood imaginary worlds and stories, which could be described as dolls, girls, or princesses. This universe of "simple things" is portrayed through a simple and rigorous formal language, working playfully in a space between abstraction and representation, with a reality that is evoked but not represented.

Seeking the limit of representation, things are stripped of most of their attributes and converted into "form". It could be argued that "form" is the true theme of Sabine Finkenauer's work: the ambiguity between representation and definition as a sign or symbol relates to ideas of what is visible and what is invisible, from what we see to what is there, intimate and subjective.

This German artist has had several years of constant progression and recognition. Her solo show at the Städtische Galerie in Villingen–Schwenningen, Germany, and her participation in the Non-Declarative Art exhibition at the Drawing Center in New York (2007), curated by Luis Camnitzer, confirm the interest that her work holds. Similarly  with her recent participation in Painting: Permanent Renewal, curated by Mariano Navarro, at the Patio Herreriano Museum in Valladolid (2021) and in Drawing Positions, curated by Monica Álvarez Careaga at the CAB in Burgos (2019).