Rissa

Biography

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German artist Rissa was born as Karin Martin in Rabenstein near Chemnitz in 1938. She studied painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, where she was admitted to Karl Otto Götz’s class in 1960, alongside other renowned fellow students such as Gerhard Richter, Gotthard Graubner and Sigmar Polke. Her encounter with the master of Informel had a lasting impact on her life, both personally and artistically. The two married in 1965 and shared an intense life and creative work until K.O. Götz’s death in 2017.

Under his artistic influence, Rissa initially began painting informally, but by the mid-1960s she was increasingly distancing herself from abstraction and striking out on her own path into figurative painting, which she has not left since.

After a long hiatus, Rissa returned to painting in 2018, one year after Götz’s death, and received a comprehensive retrospective at the Düsseldorf Akademie Galerie and the Chemnitz Art Collections. In 2021, her first exhibition in an art gallery took place with the exhibition Rissa – Ich male wieder at DIE GALERIE. The artist lives and works in Wolfenacker-Niederbreitbach.

CV

1938: Born Karin Martin on 22 June 1938 in Rabenstein, near Chemnitz.

1953: Escaped from East Germany to West Germany.

1959: A-levels in Bochum.

1959-1965: Studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. In 1960, she was accepted into K.O. Götz’s class.

1964: Switched from informal to representational painting style and passed state examination in art education.

1965: Married Karl Otto Götz.

1966: Group exhibition EXTRA at the Municipal Museum in Wiesbaden.

1969-1975: Lecturer and later senior lecturer at the Düsseldorf Art Academy.

1972: Publication of the book ‘Problems of Image Aesthetics. An Introduction to Visual Thinking’ with Karl Otto Götz.

1975-2007: Professor of painting at the Düsseldorf Art Academy.

1977: Founding of the artist group AXIOM.

1980: Retrospective at the Märkisches Museum in Witten.

1988: Equal opportunities officer at the Düsseldorf Art Academy.

1994: Exhibition at the Chemnitz Municipal Art Collections.

1997: Founded the K.O. Götz and Rissa Foundation.

2004: Participated in the group exhibition ‘Homage to K.O. Götz’ at the Museum Küppersmühle, Duisburg.

2007: Emeritus professor at the Düsseldorf Art Academy.

2009: Member of the Art Academy Advisory Board of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. Awarded the Order of Merit of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate. Exhibition at the Roentgen Museum and the Municipal Gallery of the City of Neuwied together with K.O. Götz.

2012: Honorary member of the Düsseldorf Art Academy.

2018: Retrospective at the Akademie Galerie, Düsseldorf. Retrospective at the Kunstsammlungen, Chemnitz

The artist lives and works in Wolfenacker-Niederbreitbach, Germany.