Sabine Moritz

One of the artists featured in Vitamin P2, new perspectives in painting is the wife of Gerhard Richter. Ms. Moritz has been painting since around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, when she was studying at Offenbach University of Art and design. She was born in East Germany and features a lot of images drawn from her childhood in many of her works. I was particularly drawn to the intense brushwork in her paintings, they seem to be almost Impressionistic in style and many of the vistas look as though they are being viewed through a curtain of rain or fragmented memory.

Her website features an overview of many themes in her paintings – from her drawings to paintings of boats, planes and helicopters. Her helicopter series was painted between 2003 and 2013.

These are a few of the paintings that I found particularly interesting:

Sabine Moritz *The Red Skirt* oil on canvas

This is such a clever painting. Composition, colour palette, brushwork, everything works in harmony. I love how the red skirt in the foreground is echoed in the skirt of the woman further back on the right. And the woman in between them is bent and her arched back, painted in shades of blue, forms a bridge between the two red skirts, connecting them and keeping your eye moving backwards and forwards.

Sabine Moritz *Silser See* 2015 oil on canvas

You can feel the coldness and almost hear the waves in this painting. It is a simple composition but yet so powerful.

Sabine Moritz *The Headscarf* 2010 oil on canvas

When I first saw this painting, I didn’t notice the chap in the army uniform standing behind the woman. It’s as if he appeared out of nowhere and the flecks of white paint to his left and behind him, seem to evoke this sense of movement, it’s as if he’s a ghost.

This painting is from Sabine’s newer abstract works, where she concentrates on colour, line and energy. Her brushwork is still Impressionist but the strokes are longer and seem more measured.

Gerhard Richter has used his wife as a model for many paintings, I found this one particularly poignant and beautiful. We are looking through a gossamer veil at this intensely personal and private portrait of his wife with their baby, which is almost classical madonna and child.