Tomma Abts

(German, born 1967)

Tomma Abts is a contemporary German abstract painter. Best known for her small-scale, intricately composed geometric works, Abts creates surfaces that echo digital schema while retaining a short but definite sense of depth. Born in 1967 in Kiel, West Germany, she studied at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin until 1995, after which she received a grant and set up residence in London, England. Abst works intuitively, creating imagery from chance patterns in form, and her finished paintings bear the mark of being carefully re-worked numerous times. “I develop something without any preconceptions of what it is going to look like,” she has said. “So, to give it a meaning and sense of self-evidence, I try to define the forms precisely. They become, through the shadows, texture, etcetera, quite physical and therefore ‘real’ and not an image of something else.” Abts notably won the 2006 prestigious Turner Prize, becoming the first woman to do so, and has received global critical recognition for her work, highlighted by exhibitions at the New Museum in New York, the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, and the Tate Britain in London. Abts currently lives and works in London, England and has exhibited with greengrassi in London and David Zwirner in New York.