Helga Schmidhuber

When the eyes circle

Helga Schmidhuber often uses found objects from flora and fauna as the starting point for her sculptures and paintings, which she allows to grow into expansive installations. To this end, she creates collages from screens, taxidermy, skulls, sound, etc.

Painting is the focus of her experimental, multimedia work. The elements of several overlapping layers of images are combined to create a new picture. The central motif is again animals, not in their natural environment, but in an abstract, energetically charged field of tension. Does this show the threat or the auratic charisma of these individuals? This question remains open. Schmidhuber has had an affinity with the animal world and the natural sciences since childhood. According to Schmidhuber, many phenomena that exist in nature can be transferred to the conditions and areas of human existence.

Helga Schmidhuber was born in Wiesbaden in 1972. After completing her design studies, she studied fine art at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1999 to 2004 under Prof. Dieter Krieg and Prof. Albert Oehlen, who appointed her as his first master student.

Since 2006, the artist has participated in artist-in-residence programs and has worked in Austria, Iceland, Canada and Spain. Her work has been shown internationally in important institutions such as the Hamburger Kunsthalle, CCA Kunsthalle / Mallorca, Museum Wiesbaden, Museum Villa Rot, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Zoologisches Museum Hamburg, Nassauischer Kunstverein, among others.

She has been awarded the Markus Lüpertz Prize and the Max Ernst Scholarship, among others. In 2020, she received the prestigious Hans Platschek Prize and in 2024 the work scholarship of the STIFTUNG_Kunstfonds.