Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
Linescape 1
Heike Negenborn Germany, (b. 1964)
Lithograph
German artist Heike Negenborn is best known for her highly realistic paintings of the German and French countryside. Her paintings are created through precise mathematical and geometrical calculations, utilizing methods of perspective which have been employed by artists as far back as the Renaissance. Negenborn creates her work in two phases, first going out into the landscape for a period of research and study, taking copious photographs, which she will then deconstruct and arranges into painted and printed compositions.
In her work Linescape 1, one of a series of lithographs, Negenborn peels back her typical photo-realistic paint layer to reveal the landscape’s underlying structure, giving the viewer a peek into her meticulous artistic process. She plays the part of surveyor as well as artist, creating gridded schematics of the land that show her rational and measured approach.
Negenborn’s work is greatly inspired by the work of the 17th century Dutch landscape master Jacob van Ruisdael who popularized the low-horizon landscape paired with clouds (an element which Negenborn also embraces but is decidedly absent in this series).