Franziska Klotz Germany, b. 1979

Franziska Klotz was born in 1979 in Dresden, Germany. Before studying fine art, she completed internships at three of Berlin's most significant theatrical institutions: the Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, the Volksbühne, and the Berliner Ensemble (1998/99). She then began studies in stage and costume design at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden (1999), before transferring to the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee, where she studied Free Art and Painting under Professor Werner Liebmann from 2000 to 2006, completing her Diplom in 2005 and graduating as Meisterschülerin in 2006. This formation, moving between theatre, design, and painting, left a lasting imprint on a practice attuned to staging, spectatorship, and the politics of the image.

Klotz's paintings are grounded in observation and driven by existential and political questions. She distills contemporary history paintings from the flood of media imagery surrounding us, working with motifs drawn from political demonstrations, social media self-presentation, and the textures of everyday life. Her formal language is built on productive tensions: dark versus light, cold versus warm, form versus color, the defined versus the amorphous. A recurring subject is the figure of the girl in adolescence, depicted alone and in carefully staged moments drawn from online subcultures, her gaze simultaneously seeking confrontation and reassurance. In parallel, Klotz paints crowds, bodies, shields, and silhouettes filtered through political and philosophical readings, including Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan, placing the individual within structures of power, fear, and collective vulnerability. Organizing the image field through purely painterly means, her work has been described as a virtuosic handling of the different modes of painting.

Klotz has received the Max Ernst Scholarship of the City of Brühl (2005) and was twice invited by the Goethe Institute as resident artist at the Kulturakademie Tarabya in Istanbul (2015 and 2018). Her work has entered the collection of the City of Dresden through the Städtische Galerie Dresden's acquisitions programme. Key publications include a monograph published by KORNFELD Galerie Berlin and the Städtische Galerie Dresden (2025), and the catalogue Franziska Klotz. GrundRisse, published by Sylter Kunstfreunde e.V. (2023).

Her exhibition history spans Germany, Austria, Italy, Denmark, South Korea, the United States, Serbia, Turkey, and Russia. Solo presentations include H3PO4 at KORNFELD Galerie Berlin (2014), Memories of Tomorrow at KORNFELD Galerie Berlin (2018), Ölregen at Kulturforum Schorndorf (2019), GRUND RISSE at 69 Salon by KORNFELD Galerie Berlin (2023 and 2024), Zwischenzone at Kunstverein Villa Wessel, Iserlohn (2024), and sur-faces at the Städtische Galerie Dresden (2025). Group exhibitions include the 4th International Biennial of Young Art, Moscow (2014); Balagan!!! at the Stiftung Brandenburger Tor, Berlin (2015); the 56th October Salon in Belgrade (2016); and Berliner Realistinnen. 65 Jahre Haus am Lützowplatz at the Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin (2025).

Franziska Klotz is represented by KORNFELD Galerie Berlin, with whom she has exhibited since 2013 across solo shows, duo presentations, and art fairs including Art Busan, Korea, and Art Karlsruhe. The gallery has been a consistent platform for her evolving practice, most recently co-publishing the catalogue for sur-faces alongside the Städtische Galerie Dresden. Klotz continues to develop a body of work that holds the personal and the political in close proximity, painting a world in which individual vulnerability and collective force are never far apart.