Background
Sophie von Hellermann was born in 1975 in Munich, Germany. She is a daughter of a nuclear physicist and an art historian.
2013
Sophie von Hellermann at work. Photo by Jenny Western.
Eiskellerstraße 1, 40213 Düsseldorf, Germany
The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf where Sophie von Hellermann received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
Kensington Gore, South Kensington, London SW7 2EU, London
The Royal Academy of Arts where Sophie von Hellermann obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree.
Sophie von Hellermann. Photo by Jenny Lewis.
Sophie von Hellermann. Photo by Jenny Lewis.
Sophie von Hellermann. Photo by Jenny Lewis.
Sophie von Hellermann. Photo by Jenny Lewis.
Sophie von Hellermann. Photo by Jenny Lewis.
Sophie von Hellermann at work.
Sophie von Hellermann was born in 1975 in Munich, Germany. She is a daughter of a nuclear physicist and an art historian.
Sophie von Hellermann was raised in Germany till 1984 when her family moved to the British university town of Oxford.
Von Hellermann studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1993 to 1998. A Bachelor of Fine Arts degree she received at the institution was followed by a Master of Fine Arts from the Royal College of Art three years later.
It was during this time when von Hellermann met informal painters and musicians with whom she collaborated in the group 'Hobbypop'.
The start of Sophie von Hellermann's career can be counted from her studying years at the Royal College of Art when she took part in first exhibitions, the group ones at that moment. She demonstrated her early artworks in Antwerp, Belgium, and at the Taylor Gallery in London.
In 2001, the Charles Saatchi Gallery organized the first solo show of the artist. It was followed by two more personal exhibitions, in Cologne, Germany, and at the Marc Foxx Gallery in Los Angeles. A year later, von Hellermann was featured among the works of Francis Picabia, Sigmar Polke, and John Currin at the Centre Pompidou.
Von Hellermann's works caused mixed reactions since the first appearance on the art scene. The artist was criticized for the use of untreated canvases as well as for the choice of the subjects often borrowed from the pop-culture, like the personality of the famous singer and musician of the time Nico.
Von Hellermann has widely exhibited nationally and internationally afterwards. Nowadays, she shares her time between London and Margate, United Kingdom.
Quotations:
"Painting idioms and metaphor and literary references has always been part of my practice. I see the empty canvas as a mirror for thoughts like a stage and the pigments and acrylic emulsion and water as narrators and actors."
"Colors by themselves don't mean much and are just screens for projection. But set against and mixed with other colors, they start acting out their abilities in relation to the space they make: blues recede but expand, reds come forward but contract, and yellows hold the middle."
"Then again my painterly practice is not so different from what was Einstein's definition of madness: to attempt the same thing over and over again with no hope of success (accompanying this thought, I imagine him playing the violin). Every new painting is started in the hope to recover the loss of the old."
"I'm always hoping that one day I'll paint the painting that's completely fresh."
"I am very interested in how our age of information is becoming more and more like a dark age similar in its tribalism to the period of the Thirty Years' War."
"I think a lot about time and how it is possibly not linear at all and that everything actually happens at once, all the time, forever. I see ghosts everywhere, and I very often see buildings that have been destroyed or become ruins."
"Anything past can be reimagined as much as the future can be reimagined, if not more. The future is rolling in on us with such a particular force that mocks the uncertainty we feel about it. The past, though full of darkness and horror, can no longer throw things at us except the odd terrible memory and pain from old wounds and increasingly appears to be cloaked in sweet-scented layers of time."
Sophie von Hellerman developed an interest in the personal life of Albert Einstein at the beginning of the 2000s when she came across the correspondence of the scientist with his wife.
Sophie von Hellermann has two children, Lilibet and Pip Viner.