KATHARINA FRITSCH German, b. 1956

Katharina Fritsch is a contemporary German sculptor. Her work mixes reality with imagination to create surreal imagery that contract reality and fantasy through her large-scale monochromatic sculptures of animals, people, and objects. Of her bright palette, she has remarked that color “evens it out, makes it abstract—like a visual sign, an icon. That is important: my work is always on the borderline between a detailed sculpture and a sign.” Fritsch’s work is often described as uncanny, containing slight representational shifts that alter the viewer’s perception of reality and highlighting the work’s falsified imitation of life. She was born on February 14, 1956, and went on to graduate from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1984, where she notably studied under the German artist Fritz Schwegler. Fritsch has since garnered international attention, notably representing Germany at the 1995 Venice Biennale. In 2013, her 14-foot statue Hahn/Cock occupied Trafalger Square’s fourth plinth in London, sparking both controversy and renewed interest in her art. Fritsch’s work is included in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York and has been the subject of solo exhibitions at White Cube in London, the Gwangju Museum of Art, and the Tate Modern, among others.