Brachmann, Anja
Biography:
Anja Brachmann was born in 1982 in Teterow (former DGR). She completed art studies at the CDF Institute Greifswald from 2001 to 2009. Since then she has been a freelance artist and lives and works in Hohen Demzin (Germany).
Whatever materials the artist Anja Brachmann chooses – charcoal, chalk or acrylic – her casual, rhythmic drawing and brush strokes fill casually large and small formats on canvas or paper. At times, she could be mistaken for a German representative of American Realism, her melancholy, tranquil scenes being somewhat reminiscent of the art of Edward Hopper (1882-1967). Her interest, however, is first and foremost not in people, but in the space that is or has been abandoned, where people have been or will be active, which is full of stories and awaits new ones. Anja Brachmann picks out of the time travel of places those moments in which only the artistic eye enjoys the privilege of observing and capturing. She freezes what will be moving and full of movement again in the next moment: Train stations, bizarre landscapes, paths and street canyons. Like Max Beckmann (1884-1950), she prefers the heavy black of gestural lines, but works with a much more restricted color palette and always orients herself to natural plays of light and shadow, whereby the space retains its three-dimensional effect. The expression of her deeply emotional, tension-filled paintings can thus be understood as a continuation and symbiosis of important, realistic painting styles of the 20th century, as a kind of “Transatlantic Realism”.
Anja Brachmann is a member of the Künstlerbund Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Her numerous exhibitions and international plein-airs have been widely discussed in the media. Since 2023 the artist is represented internationally by LDXArtodrome Gallery.
