Background
Tomma Abts was born in 1967 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
Hardenbergstraße 33, 10623 Berlin, Germany
Berlin University of the Arts where Tomma Abts studied from 1989 to 1995.
A painting ‘Tiard’ by Abts purchased at Sotheby's in London for $278,747 in 2018.
Tomma Abts was born in 1967 in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.
Tomma Abts studied mixed media at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin (currently Berlin University of the Arts) from 1989 to 1995.
Tomma Abts relocated from Germany to the United Kingdom in 1995 and settled down in London. By the beginning of the new decade, she started to earn her life wholly by her artworks. Although Abts has experimented with the canvases of all sizes, she adopted the dimension of 48 x 38 cm. She uses the dictionary of German first names to entitle her paintings.
Abts’s creative process isn’t fast because she has no predefined structure of the canvas. The artist elaborates the composition of each one spontaneously by carefully overlapping layers. The result is non-representational illusionistic images with special attention to details like the balance between shadows and light that creates a 3D effect. Many paintings by Abts are turned into prints, including by Crown Point Press in San Francisco, California.
Tomma Abts has shown her artworks internationally, including Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands. Nowadays, Abts lives and works in London. The representative of her art is Greengrassi Gallery in London and David Zwirner in New York City.
Quotations:
"Making a painting is a long-winded process of finding a form for something intuited … and making whatever shape and form it takes as clear and precise as possible."
"I develop something without any preconceptions of what it is going to look like. To give it meaning, I try to define its forms precisely. It becomes, through shadows, texture and other elements, quite physical and therefore 'real.' It is not an image of something else – it doesn't symbolize anything, or describe anything outside of painting. It represents itself."
"There is no plan or design when I work. I start with one or two colors maybe. Maybe circles have been left over from the first layer. Maybe my next step is to paint around them."
Tomma Abts is a quiet reserved person. She doesn’t like to give interviews very often.
Quotes from others about the person
"Through her intimate and compelling canvases she builds on and enriches the language of abstract painting." Tate Gallery