BAERBEL DIECKMANN

Baerbel Dieckmann was born in Bielefeld in 1961. From 1981 to 1988 she studied Sculpture at Bielefeld College under Richard Hess, and then worked as his assistant from 1988 to 1991. She taught from 1991 to 1994 in the Department of Stone Masonry and Stone Sculpture of the Craft Masters School in Kai­serslautern. After winning three first prizes in a competition for art in a built environment in 1993 (new District Centre for Bad Schwalbach) and shortly afterwards being admitted to the Darmstadt Secession, she went free-lance and moved to Berlin.

Apart from the significant influence of her teacher Richard Hess and his teacher Waldemar Grzimek, both of whom were decisive in her orienta­tion towards the classical figure, Dieckmann drew much input from her study of classical sculpture and her exploration of works by Augu­ste Rodin, Aristide Maillol, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Medardo Rosso, the Italian sculpture of Arturo Mar­tini, Emilio Greco, Marino Marini, Luciano Minguzzi and Pericle Faz­zini, but also Alberto Giacometti, Germaine Richter, Pablo Picasso (whose bullfighting theme went some way to inspiring her own inte­rest in the  Minotaur) and Amadeo Modigliani.

Baerbel Dieckmann works in plaster, terracotta, bronze, stone and con­crete.