Background
Alicja Kwade was born in 1979 in Katowice, Poland. She is a daughter of a culturologist and art historian.
2010
Alicja Kwade in 2010.
2014
Alicja Kwade photographed by Oliver Mark in Berlin.
2018
Alicja Kwade in her Weissensee Studio in Berlin.
2018
Alicja Kwade in her Weissensee Studio in Berlin.
Hardenbergstraße 33, 10623 Berlin, Germany
Berlin University of the Arts where Alicja Kwade studied from 1999 to 2005.
16 John Islip St, Westminster, London SW1P 4JU, United Kingdom
Chelsea College of Arts in London where Alicja Kwade participated at the Erasmus Student Exchange Programme from 2002 to 2003.
Alicja Kwade's ‘Teleportation (Candles)’ purchased at Christie's in London for $21,275 in 2018.
Alicja Kwade near one of her sculptures.
Alicja Kwade at 44 Møen photographed by Louise Steiwer.
Alicja Kwade in 2015.
Alicja Kwade
Frankfurt, Germany
Alicja Kwade during the preview of the exhibition "Die bewegte Leere des Moments" (The moving emptiness of the moment ) at Schirn Kunsthalle Rotunde, on March 25, 2015. Photo by Hannelore Foerster
Frankfurt, Germany
Alicja Kwade during the preview of the exhibition "Die bewegte Leere des Moments" (The moving emptiness of the moment ) at Schirn Kunsthalle Rotunde, on March 25, 2015. Photo by Hannelore Foerster
Alicja Kwade was born in 1979 in Katowice, Poland. She is a daughter of a culturologist and art historian.
When Alicja Kwade was eight years old, her parents relocated to Germany. She was raised in Hannover.
Kwade remembers that her father didn’t read her fairytales at bedtime. Instead, he told her to dream about the fact that space was endless.
In 1998, Alicja Kwade came to Berlin where she entered the Universität der Künste Berlin (the Berlin University of the Arts) a year after. In 2002, she went at Chelsea College of Arts in London where she spent a year as a participant of the Erasmus student exchange Programme.
Kwade graduated from the Berlin University of the Arts in 2005.
Alicja Kwade received her first great acclaim as an artist in 2008 when she won the Piepenbrock Prize for Sculpture for her ‘Kwade’s Palette’. The award provided the young artist with a possibility to develop her skills at the teaching program in the Berlin University of the Arts and a show at the Hamburger Bahnhof museum.
Since then, Kwade has exhibited at well-known museums and galleries. She has also worked in the studios in Kreuzberg and Weißensee districts of Berlin. In 2012, she participated at the artist-in-residence program Le Vauclin in France.
Her solo exhibitions have been held all around the world, including the shows in Hannover, 2015 Kunsthalle Schirn in Frankfurt, 2016 London’s Whitechapel Gallery, i8 Gallery in Reykjavik, Iceland (2017), and the most recent shows at the Centre de Création Contemporaine Olivier Debré in France, and at 330 Gallery in New York City, both in 2019. Besides, she is a regular participant of Venice Biennale.
The now representatives of Kwade’s art are Berlin’s and London’s König Galerie, 303 Gallery in New York City, and Galerie Kamel Mennour in Paris.
Quotations:
"I’m not a believer. I don’t believe in what I see or what people tell me."
"I’m trying to see what could be the structure of reality. I mean, we’re living on a ball that’s flying around. That’s crazy. Imagining that, everything is kind of possible. Because we can’t understand it anyway. We’re just animals, our brains are too small. Trying to understand the situation we’re all in is kind of incredible."
"I don’t need people to completely understand. From the moment I release the work from my studio, I’m not there to tell people what to think. It should do something. It should touch you in some way. If it’s just pure beauty, that’s okay. I know people struggle with that, but I don’t. I’m creating a physical thing in space and that has to work on its own, without me. I expect that from art actually."
"I’m very interested in the emptiness – the fact that 99.9 percent of matter is just emptiness. That is just crazy when you think about it. It’s something I’m trying to work myself through."
Alicja Kwade is a curious and honest artist.
Quotes from others about the person
"Alicja’s work packs a wallop. She pushes materials to the limit, working with engineers to the edge of ‘you can’t do that’ and challenging the systems we have created for ourselves in our feeble attempts to understand reality." Pedro Alonzo, art curator
Alicja Kwade has been dated with a German contemporary artist Gregor Hildebrand for twelve years.