Rosa Loy is one of the few female members of the New Leipzig School in post-reunification Germany. This East German style of painting grew to prominence in the international art scene following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In Loy’s figurative paintings, the artist includes a twinge of Social-Realism, with whimsical color choices, palettes and highly personalized fantastical narratives that create a unique aesthetic landscape often centering on the role of women in society. With her images centered on depictions of women and the broader notion of the feminine, Loy illustrates settings absent of masculine presence, depicting her figures in nature or at home with a range of expressions, often a mix of playful, mischievous or sinister in tone. Through her use of symbols laden with notions of the domestic or the feminine, Loy structures narratives about the present moment that indelibly echo settings and archetypes drawn from the past. 

Each work delves deeply into the realm of fairy tale and mythology, with Medieval, religious and operatic, this year especially Wagnerian, references. In doing so, Loy mines long-held expectations of gender and femininity, recasting them in a contemporary sense but unspecific, familiar but also wholly fantastical, artistic contexts. Loy’s husband, the painter Neo Rauch, has written about her work in a poetic manner that perfectly mirrors the illogic of Loy’s fanciful scenes: “Rosa Loy can thus be seen as one of those who participate in weaving the precious magic curtain that drifts through the epochs, in the shadow of which monsters surely also nest, but whose touch always has a healing effect. In the process, she pursues the great mysteries, seeing herself involved in circles where lost female knowledge circulates and is rekindled. And whoever delivers himself up to her pictures with an alert mind can sense their inherent vitality overflow onto himself."[1] 

Rosa Loy (b. 1958, Zwickau, Germany) studied at the Humboldt University in Berlin and the School of Visual Arts, Leipzig. She has exhibited widely across the globe, with solo exhibitions at institutions including the Drents Museum, Netherlands; Kunsthalle Gießen, Germany; Kunstraum Innsbruck, Innsbruck and group shows at Essl Museum, Vienna; Kunsthalle, Leipzig; Museum of Contemporary Art, Leipzig. Works by Loy are held in numerous prominent collections, including Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Leipzig, Germany; Busan Museum of Art, South Korea; Galerie Neue Meister, Dresden, Germany. The artist lives and works in Leipzig, Germany. 

 [1] Riese, Rauch, & Steiner, “Rosa Loy, Manna”. Rosa Loy, Manna, Kunsthalle Gießen. Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011, pp. 246-247.