Hjördis Baacke

A deserted bike path amidst a green meadow landscape, lush green meadows with indefinable patches of yellow, withered grass, trees towering to the left, and a cloudy sky. This small painting, untitled (2020), is very minimalist in representational terms. The motifs of Leipzig-based painter Hjördis Baacke are often surprisingly unexciting. The artist, who comes from classical landscape painting, also deliberately chooses unspectacular compositions. Her use of color, which often remains almost understated, is particularly impressive: "The unspectacular motif reinforces the tranquility of the picture and allows one to revel in the landscape as a painted image," says the artist.
On the one hand, her compositions appear restrained, close to nature, and composed; on the other, they exhibit a very free approach to color. And so, upon closer inspection of the painting with the bike path, an airy cascade of different hues emerges from the overcast sky: From purple to light blue, light yellow, and dark gray, everything can be discovered in the clouds. The color scheme appears realistic due to its undeniable realism, and indeed, nature itself often surprises us with unexpectedly spectacular color combinations! Another exciting, anything but ordinary pictorial idea is the aqueduct over the Luppe River at Leipzig's Auensee, which obscures the foreground but is located outside the painting, thus imaginarily expanding the pictorial space. Through this sharp chiaroscuro contrast, the artist creates a broader color space and brings tension to the image. The chiaroscuro in this small-format oil painting is both dramatic and subtle: a contradiction we frequently encounter in Hjördis Baacke's works.

In fact, a sophisticated game of hide-and-seek can be observed in many of Baacke's paintings, which can be explained not least by her systematic composition. Be it a child in a bathrobe by the sea (2018), semi-abstract forest landscapes, often the Leipzig floodplain forest (2021), barren tree trunks, colorfully dotted meadows (2019): the painter, who studied at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig (HGB) under Arno Rink and Neo Rauch, begins her paintings with bright, strong colors. She then layers more muted colors on top, allowing the underlying colors to shine through in places and as they emerge during the painting process.

Baacke uses her own photographs as a working basis. She adopts the compositions presented to her in the photos as they are, which gives her paintings an incredible authenticity. This form of pictorial genesis, in which the composition is no longer questioned during the painting process, allows the artist great freedom in the use of color. Baacke finds her painterly freedom in minimalism. Using the photos as inspiration, she strives for a specific painterly realism that, as she says, draws the viewer back to the color and composition. Her self-created photographic templates are essential, especially for the lighting conditions, colors, brightness, and darkness, because, as the artist explains: "There are light and color constellations that I simply cannot imagine. I need the photos as sketches, because the color constellation and whether the color temperature is harmonious are often extremely important in the picture."

During her work, Baacke plays and experiments with colors until she arrives at a credible visual solution. With this working method, she captures atmospheric, momentary moods. Looking at her paintings and drawings evokes associations with the Impressionists, especially Claude Monet. Hjördis Baacke's pictures move within a vast field of tension between exuberant freedom and minimalist constraint, between representational obviousness and coloristic enigmaticness. This gives them a strong, mysterious attraction that hardly lets the viewer go.

Dr. Sara Tröster Klemm 202