Pia Fries

Early Life & Career

Born in Switzerland in 1955

Studied sculpture at the Lucerne School of Art (Germany) in 1980

After, she studied painting at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Gerhard Richter until 1986

Mentor-Gerhard Richter

Learned from Richter-

 Sometimes uses the squeegee to apply paint 

Not any specific theory of painting but the belief that painting was something that “you can do today.”

His Work

Abstract Painting (750-1)

1991

oil on canvas

260cm x 200cm

859-2 AB, China

1999

oil on canvas

55 1/8" x 39 3/8"

Fuji

1996

Oil, aluminum

11 3/8 x 14 9/16 in

Fries's Style

• Uses both photographed and silkscreened elements 
• Sometimes there is the use of piles of caked, troweled, scraped and smeared oil paint
• Paints on flat white ground to start 
• Uses on occasion the prints of botanical illustrations from the 17th century artist Maria Sybilla Merian on corrugated board 

Description of Her Art

• “Colors are swirled, poked, molded, and even bound together in rhythmic sequences that appear to be, for instance, like the sequences and activities of a microscopic sample, a stream bed, or topography from the air. They are subject to logical thought and exploration”. -New York Art World
• “Here images migrate into the compositional field and are forced to compete with hard-edged spaces and ripples of excavated carved-out patches of cardboard.  The result is that Fries presents a fixed image based on continuous variations.  Nevertheless, amid a deceivingly chaotic appearance there remains coherence in the artist’s choices that anchor each composition.” -Aurobora
• “Using palette knives, squeegees and extruding tools that she makes herself, Pia Fries loads paint in massive quantities onto snowy white panels, creating viscerally attractive topographies of striated swathes, rippling ribbons, melting puddles and bristly thickets of brush strokes. The paint itself seems to have absorbed the playful spirit of the artist and taken on a comically agitated life of its own. Call it abstract animism.” -New York Times
• “Kind of archaeology of the painterly gesture, showing its traces, memories and all the organized and distanced debris and ruins of a partially lost botanical past that is suddenly resuscitated in a conscious ambiguity." -Christine Buci-Glucksmann

Fries in Action

Her Art

Les Aquarelles De Leningrad, Series E-2 (2003)

oil paint and facsimile on panel 

31 1/2 x 23 5/8 inches

Les Aquarelles De Leningrad, Series E-2 (2003)

oil paint and facsimile on panel 

31 1/2 x 23 5/8 inches

TISCH DOVER II (2006)

oil and silkscreen on wood panel

27 1/2" x 19 5/8"

Seewärts (2011)

Oil and silkscreen on wood

105 x 77 cm

Falc (2007)

Color soap ground and spit bite aquatints with photogravure and roulette

87.6 x 64.8 cm

Masselina (2004)

oil paint and silkscreen on panel

19 5/8 x 15 3/4 inches / 19 5/8 x 15 inches

Rake (2007)

Color soap ground and spit bite aquatints with photogravure and roulette

34½ x 25½"

Why I Chose Her

I am gravitated to her work from the use of the paint, how it, in some cases, is extruded in ribbons, and others where it is scraped, pushed and pulled. She shows the various ways of utilizing and distorting the material, all representing her view on nature. The vivacity of the art also captures the viewer, drawing you into the composition. I love her experimentation with different mediums; it causes her to have a uniqueness about her work.

Bibliography

http://www.artstor.org/

http://www.crownpoint.com/artists/fries

http://www.artnet.com/artists/pia-fries/

http://www.magical-secrets.com/artists/fries/bio

http://piafries.com/