Helga Maria Albrecht
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Helga Maria Albrecht lives and works in Hamburg. She studied visual arts in Schwäbisch Gmünd. She started out painting photorealistically, then spent years on figurative female nudes, and eventually turned to landscape after several trips to the American West. Albrecht paints in acrylic and watercolour on canvas and paper. Her series A Trip to the Moselle was shown with poems by her husband, Manfred Otto-Albrecht. Her most recent solo, SPRING, opened at Small Giant Gallery in Hamburg in April.
Q: You studied visual arts in Schwäbisch Gmünd. Tell us a bit about your path into painting.
A: Even as a child, painting was a way for me to tell stories, and I always took particular care to decorate my school exercise books. My father was very supportive of my painting and creative work. As a teenager, I mainly drew, using pencil and ink. As a student of Visual Arts, my favourite subjects were life drawing, freehand drawing and all illustration techniques, and for several years I painted in a photorealistic style and exhibited in pubs and cafés.
As I developed personally, my painting became increasingly freer and more expressive. Between 1995 and 2008, I painted predominantly figuratively, in acrylic, using a gestural style and many layers, and explored feminist themes through my female nudes.
Eventually, several trips to the western United States and my fascination with the vastness and beauty of these landscapes led me to focus on landscape and nature, and increasingly towards abstraction.
Q: You describe painting as a dialogue with the image, no plan, outcome open. How comfortable are you with that uncertainty by now?
A: Well, I cope with it better at some times than others. It's not always pleasant, of course, but it's what feels most authentic and honest to me, and that's what matters to me: I want to allow for that immediate, honest expression in conversation and then see what comes of it. The uncertainty appeals to me, and it certainly holds wondrous possibilities: just think of all that might emerge from it, and all I might learn about myself in the process… It's like having an intense conversation with another person.
That can be unpredictable, surprising or frustrating, but it can also be personal, close, intimate and fulfilling. I have these feelings at the end of the process, when a painting feels complete, and they are worth it.
Generally speaking, I like challenges and actually want to constantly push my boundaries. This type of artistic process is ideally suited to that.
Q: Your show titles often reference landscape. But when you paint, how much of it is about an actual place?
A: Although the inspiration for my paintings comes from real landscapes, I am not concerned with depicting them. As I wander through an area, I gather impressions, but without any documentary intent. The specific natural setting or a particular detail must hold a fascination for me. Sometimes I take photos on my smartphone, but these are merely a kind of anchor to help me recall that inner perception and my feelings at the time later on.
This is then my approach in the studio. The following painting process often leads to results that have little or nothing to do with a representation of the original landscape. Nevertheless, my series of works capture the spirit of a landscape, even though I do not consciously aim for this. Sometimes I wish to pay tribute to a landscape that has served as the starting point for a series through the exhibition title.
Q: A Trip to the Moselle was paired with poems by Manfred Otto-Albrecht. How did that collaboration come about?
A: He is my husband, and he writes beautiful prose. We go on lots of trips together. In 2020, during the pandemic, it wasn't possible to travel abroad, so we decided to spend our holiday exploring an area of Germany that hadn't interested us before. We chose the Moselle region. And I actually fell in love with this river, so much so that we went back a year later.
The Moselle taught me a great deal about all the shades of green and their effect. It is an incredibly green river with an impressive tranquillity and quiet presence that really grounded me. I spent a year painting lots of pictures of the Moselle and asked my husband to write poetic texts to accompany them. This then led to a joint exhibition project.
Q: You've said that the process should stay visible in the finished work. Do you resist the urge to clean things up?
A: Spontaneous gestural expression with brush and paint is important to me because it possesses a certain inherent honesty. Nevertheless, during the painting process, I consciously shape the pictorial space and focus on composition and the interplay of individual gestures. It often happens that I make a spontaneous move and then spend a long time pondering what should come next, and so on. When I think about it, it's not just about the next step, but about the picture as a whole.
But yes, I often find myself wanting to create harmony within the picture's format and, for example, balancing an intervention in one place with a counter-reaction at the other end.
It takes courage not to do so, just as it does to destroy a seemingly finished, harmonious section. Too much harmony bores me, because I actually like things to be full of tension. It's often a long back-and-forth process.
Q: You have SPRING coming up at Small Giant Gallery. What can we expect?
A: In April, the Small Giant Gallery in Hamburg is exhibiting a selection of my medium- and small-format works in acrylic on canvas, curated specifically to welcome in spring.
These are abstract landscapes that evoke a light, spring-like mood and bring movement, colour and atmosphere into the room. With a poetic visual language, subtle colour tones and open horizons, the works depict not so much specific places as feelings and moods that communicate directly with the viewer. The works open up vast spaces for association and invite us to discover landscape as an emotional and atmospheric space of experience.
