NOIRE

Born in Beromünster, near Lucerne, in 1955, Pia Fries lives and works in Düsseldorf and Munich. After initially studying sculpture in Lucerne, she became a pupil of Gerhard Richter at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf en 1986. Since the mid-1980s her works have taken the form of Bildobjekte, or “image-objects”, with her use of impasto conjuring up crevasses and geological folds and setting her pictures on the cusp between painting and sculpture. Her use of colour is direct and her composition vigorous. Each picture is the product of explorations and experimentation whose core concern is colour as both substance and raw material.