B I O G R A P H Y Anna Leonhardt (b. 1981 Pforzheim, Germany) studied painting under Professor Ralf Kerbach in Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, a school renowned for its highly technical and formal academia. Leonhardt has shown in Dresden, Berlin and Leipzig and her work is in numerous private and public collections including Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Kunstsammlung des Sächsischen Landtages, art collection of the Saxon Parliament and Ostsächsische Sparkasse Dresden A red evening sky, the body language of daily commuters, the glow of lights from a neighbor’s house – Anna Leonhardt synthesizes life’s endless stimuli in her abstract work. The famous Russian painter Malevich said that a painted surface is a real living form. Leonhardt activates her paintings with many layers of thick oil paint, bringing a palpable vitality to her work. Every inch of the surface is carefully attended, resulting in a two-fold enthrallment: color and materiality. To Leonhardt, the most distinct forms are vertical and horizontal. She affectionately calls these “Raumzeug” (“Space Stuff”). Rightfully so, they are the intrigue and the subject matter in her work. Always in exuberant impasto, these multi-layered marks often seem to float freely and are in a perceived interaction with both the canvas and each other, epitomizing Leonhardt’s innate grasp of rhythm and balance. Preferring the palette knife over a brush, Leonhardt welcomes accidents and consequences considering it an element of chance with each drag of the knife. She builds up complex compositions intuitively as much as logically. The varied colors are the star performers on her canvas stage; they bleed and blend right up to the edges of the painting. Luminous and mystic, her pieces are memorable metaphors of the physical world.