Norbert Bisky is a German painter based in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

, best known for his fresco

Fresco

Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...

s depicting adolescents.^{http://www.picassomio.com/NorbertBisky/}

He was born at Leipzig

Leipzig

Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...

 in the former German Democratic Republic

German Democratic Republic

The German Democratic Republic , informally called East Germany by West Germany and other countries, was a socialist state established in 1949 in the Soviet zone of occupied Germany, including East Berlin of the Allied-occupied capital city...

. The son of a Communist

Communism

Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...

 official, he grew up in a home in which Communism assumed the power of a religion. He studied from the mid 1990s at the Hochschule der Künste where he was a master student of Georg Baselitz

Georg Baselitz

Georg Baselitz is a German painter who studied in the former East Germany, before moving to what was then the country of West Germany...

 in Berlin and at the Salzburg Summer Academy in the class of Jim Dine

Jim Dine

Jim Dine is an American pop artist. He is sometimes considered to be a part of the Neo-Dada movement. He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, attended Walnut Hills High School, the University of Cincinnati, and received a BFA from Ohio University in 1957. He first earned respect in the art world with...

.

His work is greatly influenced by the socialist realism

Socialist realism

Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...

 which was the official art of the GDR. In recent years he has shifted to darker themes of disaster, disease and decapitation while retaining the consummate painterliness which is the hallmark of his work. His figures, in many cases are floating, falling, tumbling, without any gravitational axis. The tumult surrounding the figures is punctuated by the cross pollination of cues from Christian ideology, art history, gay culture, pornography and apocalyptic visions.
Bisky transmits an impression of instability on the canvas that distinctly resonates with our contemporary state of affairs.

Exhibitions

2010

• "befall", Galerie Crone, Berlin
• "Maudit", Galerie Charlotte Moser, Geneva, Switzerland

2009

• "Mandelkern", Kunstverein Dortmund, Germany
• "Nefasto Máximo", Galería Espacio Mínimo, Madrid
• "Norbert Bisky: Paintings", Haifa Museum of Art, Israel

2008

• "cloud cuckoo land", Gallery Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
• "privat", Galerie Crone, Berlin
• "minimental", Cokkie Snoei Gallery, Rotterdam

2007

• "What's wrong with me" Leo Koenig Inc., NYC
• "Behind Innocence", Gallery Hyundai, Seoul
• "It wasn't me", Haus am Waldsee, Berlin

2006

• "Total Care", Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius
• "es tut mir so leid", Galerie Michael Schultz, Berlin

2005

• Studio d´Arte Cannaviello, Milan
• "Déluge", Galerie Suzanne Tarasiève, Paris
• "Malerei", Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin

2004

• "The Proud, the Few", Leo Koenig Inc., NYC
• "Abgesagt", Mannheimer Kunstverein
• "Opkomst en Verval" , Cokkie Snoei Gallery, Rotterdam

2003

• "Schlachteplatte", Galerie Michael Schultz, Berlin

2002

• Museum Junge Kunst, Frankfurt/O.

2001

• "Wir werden siegen", Galerie Michael Schultz, Berlin
• "Vorkämpfer", Chelsea Kunstraum, Köln

Public Collections

• MoMA
  Museum of Modern Art
  The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
  
  
• Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig
• Museum Ludwig
  Museum Ludwig
  Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from PopArt, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It also features many works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein....
  
  
• National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea

External links

• www.norbertbisky.com
• Interview with Norbert Bisky in Exberliner Magazine
• Leo Koenig Inc.: Norbert Bisky
• Haifa Museum of Art
• Artnet.com profile