Fighting and Playing – Bertamaria Reetz

Painting, graphics, drawing and sculpture are primarily media to German visual artist Bertamaria Reetz. The exhibition at Art Centre Silkeborg Bad is titled Kämpfen und Spielen – to fight and to play. It is the first solo presentation In Denmark for the 65-year old artist.  Her work is generally centred around human existence.

Manifold types of heads and faces and well as models are the dominating motives of this artist, who derive from the area around Cologne. In the centre of her work one finds the existential questions, life as a search for clarity and truth.

First and foremost, she touches the viewer, communicates with him/her, challenges and confronts them with their inner self and personal idea of what they see. The notion of artistic creation – understood as the creative process, during which matter are shaped – in a perfect way describe the working method of Reetz, as carefulness, concentrated planning and precise works of a craftsman is characterizing her process of creation. She tells about her spirit in the working process to create that it is a combination of fight, hard work and playfulness.

The result – the art work – marks the finish of her own efforts and for the spectator the beginning of a new truthful reflection to his own existence and value. Bertamaria Reetz is an artist keen on experiments with techniques. Again, and again she tries herself in with new combinations of materials. The appearance of the to the only most important reduced vision characterizes her work, and this counts for her drawings too. Alive, dynamic and energetic are these works of art. As her painting do it, also these works give associations and point to her artistic predator Käthe Kollwitz. Kollwitz is the inevitable, underlying credo of her praxis.

It was rather late in life that Bertamaria Reetz started as an artist. After a while with autodidact efforts supported by education by Antonin Málek and Rainer Aring in Cologne, she studies 1991-94 at the art academy in Düsseldorf by Professor Siegfred Cremer. It was around this time that she for the first time showed her art publicly. Most of her early works were presented in churches or other spaces with religious function. In recent years museums, art centres and galleries have shown more attention to Bertamaria Reetz, who exhibited nationally as well as in Poland, France and Italy. The artist works with her atelier at Monastery Knechtsteden, Dormagen, Germany, as the daily base.  

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Also, Bertamaria Reetz created several social art projects. Her global social art project “Blaushafherde”(The Blue Flock) aim to promote mutual tolerance and peace: We are all the same – all are important. The Blue Flock of Sheep will visit the Art Centre Silkeborg Bad in an event in the beginning of April 2019.