Artist of the Month
October 2021
Ann Wolff
German-born artist Ann Wolff began using glass to create sculpture in the 1960s. She has worked as a designer in Sweden, and as a professor in Hamburg. Today she lives in Sweden making sculpture from her studio. She is enamored by the characteristics of glass as a solid, yet transparent material. Wolff is represented by Galerie B in Sinzheim, Germany.
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Ann Wolff
Artist Statement:
Glass is both, material and non-material; it is real (there) and unreal (not there). Its relationship to the surrounding space and the inner space, the reflection of the occasional polished surfaces which allow new views, the effect of the light itself when seen through the sculpture - color as the vehicle for an invisible mass - all that is glass. That is exciting and fascinating for a sculptor like me. I am testing out old questions of identity; be it inside-outside, symmetry, layers and core, number two and the double, the goat and the monkey. Moments of recognition are what my work needs; they propel me forward. Collected moments of clarity become knowledge. I think that’s good.
About Ann Wolff
Ann Wolff is considered one of the most important international European artists. Wolff was one of the first artists to devote herself to glass as an artistic material back in the 1960s and is regarded a pioneer of the Studio Glass Movement. Born in 1937 in the German city of Lübeck, She studied design at the Design University of Ulm (Hochschule für Gestaltung) and then worked as a designer in Sweden. Since then, her fascination for this material has remained unbroken. She is impressed by its translucency, the heaviness, and at the same time its lightness. Between 1993 and 1998, Wolff worked as professor at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg (Hochschule für Bildende Künste). The artist is a true wanderer between two worlds and languages. Today she lives in Sweden.
Wolff has been awarded numerous international awards, among them the significant Coburg Glass Prize in 1977, the Bavarian State Award in 1988, the Jury Award of the Toledo Museum of Art in 2005, the Award of Excellence by the Smithsonian Renwick Collection Washington USA in 2008, and the European Award for Culture by the PRO EUROPE foundation in 2011, which for the first time was awarded to a Swede. Her works have repeatedly been displayed in solo exhibitions worldwide. The Swedish Royal Family owns several of her works.
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Acknowledgment of Gallery:
We are grateful to Galerie B, Sinzheim, Germany, for providing the Artist of the Month.
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