<\/a>existent \u2013 that she develops the motifs for her drawings. Her works convey the domination of human beings by nature, yet they also tell of people and animals co-existing in and with the natural world. Myths and customs, too, frequently play a role.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe large-format drawings are based on photographs, mostly serving as aides-memoire for the impressions, moods, and settings she experienced during her mountain treks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her colourful mountain landscapes, created with coloured pencils and pastel chalk under brilliant sunlight and dramatic skies, shift between dream and reality. Their full complexity \u2013 the snowy, icy, and glacial landscapes blending imagination and reality \u2013 unfolds only upon deeper consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the drawing \u201cTranshumance\u201d, a herd of sheep grazes on a mountain ridge, surrounded by towering, snow-covered peaks. The sight of animals grazing at such dizzying heights seems surreal, yet this centuries-old practice of Alpine pasture migration is still used today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the drawing \u201cEiger\u201d, Altsch\u00e4fer evokes the grandeur of the nearly 4,000-meter-high peak in the Bernese Alps \u2013 whose north face draws climbers from across the globe \u2013 by rendering a minuscule human figure in its shadow. She shows him just before the arduous climb to the summit, lost in thought as he gazes at the trails snaking their way upwards in tight switchbacks, the various qualities of the mountain rock portrayed with virtuosic realism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martina Altsch\u00e4fer constructs her landscapes with painstaking precision. Starting from a scaffolding of lines and vanishing points, she spends months working through each section, layer by layer, to complete her large-format compositions. Not a single line is placed without intention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In parallel with her large drawings on paper, she creates small pastels and gouaches on black card, where she explores individual sections of her large compositions in a more painterly fashion. Here, the drawn line fades away as the smudging and blending of colours brings out greater pictorial depth, pulling the viewer deeply into the image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In his catalogue essay, the writer Christoph Peters \u2013 a friend of the artist \u2013 trenchantly sums up what continually drives Martina Altsch\u00e4fer in her creative process: \u201cAs soon as we venture into the mountains,\u201d he writes, \u201cwe become wanderers, seekers, questioners, probers. Every step turns into a step into the unknown, hovering between bravery and fear, and the moment we lose our way, as the sun slips behind the high horizon, the voices of spirits in the grasses, branches, and cracks in the rocks will once again be heard. We will listen and tremble, listen and fall silent, fall silent and breathe, until an answer moves through us, either as an almost inaudible whisper or as a scream.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martina Altsch\u00e4fer,<\/strong> born 1960 in R\u00fcsselsheim, studied fine arts and German language and literature at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz and painting at the D\u00fcsseldorf Art Academy (Kunstakademie D\u00fcsseldorf). In 1991 she completed her studies as a master student of Prof. Konrad Klapheck. From 1990 to 1997 she taught drawing and painting at the Johannes Gutenberg University and at the University of Applied Sciences Wiesbaden (Fachhochschule Wiesbaden). Martina Altsch\u00e4fer has received numerous scholarships and has been awarded several prizes. Works by the artist are held in private and public collections, including the collection of the Deutsche Bank, the Kunstmuseum Albstadt, the Gutenberg Museum Mainz, and the Landesmuseum Mainz. She lives and works in R\u00fcsselsheim, where she has also published short stories and a novel with Mirabilis Verlag over the past several years.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSeveral of her drawings can be seen at the Mittelrhein Museum in Koblenz until 9th March 2025, in the exhibition \u201cDream Landscape \u2013 Nightmare Landscape\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a fourth solo exhibition, \u201cAbove the Tree Line\u201d, Galerie Poll is showcasing new drawings by Martina Altsch\u00e4fer, inspired by the astounding world of high mountain ranges. In search of untouched, untamed nature, Martina Altsch\u00e4fer is repeatedly drawn to the mountains. It is above the treeline \u2013 in a world of snow and ice, where […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":38174,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"ausstellen-text.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-38230","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38230"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39438,"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38230\/revisions\/39438"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/38174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poll-berlin.de\/galerie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}