Anna Handick was born in Nürnberg in 1985. She studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nürnberg under Claus Bury. In 2008 she was appointed master student. Since 2011 she has been a freelance artist with solo exhibitions in Germany, Switzerland, Nicaragua and numerous participations in group exhibitions. She has received various grants, including the debutant grant from the Bavarian State Ministry for Science, Research and Art and the Young Art Award from the Artforum Ute Barth. Her works are part of the collection of the Fundación Ortíz Gurdián Museum in Leon/Nicaragua and the Cultural Foundation of the Sparkasse Nuremberg.

In 2020 she founded the Abacaxi Artspace project in Managua, Nicaragua, where she currently lives and works.

Björn Braun (born in Berlin, 1979) lives and works in Karlsruhe. His work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Kunsthaus Baselland (2019), Manifesta12 (Palermo, 2018) and other international galleries. He has participated in group exhibitions in Valencia, Seoul, Cincinnati, Stavanger, Karlsruhe and São Paulo. His works have also been exhibited at "Art for Animals" and "Paint it Black".

Braun has received the Ludwig Gies Prize (2016), a scholarship from the Cité internationale des arts (2015), the Ars Viva Prize (2013) and a scholarship from the Kunststiftung Baden-Württemberg (2011).  His works are represented in private and public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt.

(Courtesy Meyer Riegger Gallery)

Jorinde Voigt was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1977.

After studying philosophy and new German literature at the Georg August University of Göttingen, she completed her studies in fine arts as a master student at the University of the Arts under Prof. Katharina Sieverding in Berlin.

Voigt is represented by the König Galerie in Berlin and the David Nolan Galerie in New York, among others. The artist has already exhibited in several international group and solo exhibitions in Europe, America and Asia. Voigt is represented in important international collections such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, the Bundeskunstsammlung in Bonn, the Hamburger Kunsthalle and the Graphische Sammlung in Munich.

Voigt works as a professor for painting/drawing at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg.

For Joseph Beuys, the preservation of nature was a special concern throughout his life. "Art is the only form in which environmental problems can be solved," he said in an interview with ZEIT magazine in 1978. This conviction was not only evident in long-term agroecological projects such as "7000 Oaks" (1982-87), when he planted 7000 hardwoods in Kassel for documenta 7 and more than doubled the tree population there. The early work "Urobjekt – Erdtelephon" from 1967 already warns of the lost connection between man and nature: No connection under this number? Who is the sender and who is the receiver remains unclear in this ambiguously legible sculpture. The Paper Future Labs by Haus des Papiers shows posters from the Hamburger Kunsthalle and the Kunstmuseum Bonn, which advertise their collections with the "earth telephone".

The performance artist and sculptor Joseph Beuys was born in Krefeld in 1921. From 1946 to 1952 he studied painting and sculpture at the Düsseldorf Art Academy and was later a master student of Ewald Mataré. From 1961 to 1972 he held a professorship at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, from which he was dismissed because of his commitment to the admission of all students without a numerus clausus and because of the repeated occupation of the secretariat. Behind this was his understanding of an "expanded concept of art". Beuys dealt with questions of humanism, social philosophy and anthroposophy. He died in Düsseldorf in 1986. In 1979 the Guggenheim Museum in New York showed a retrospective of his work.

(c) VG Bild-Kunst 2024