Philip Grözinger Germany, b. 1972

Philip Grözinger was born in 1972 in Braunschweig, Germany, and lives and works in Berlin. He studied Fine Arts at the Braunschweig University of Art (Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig), where he completed his studies as a Meisterschüler in the masterclass of Professor Karl Schulz. Following his graduation, he held a lectureship in painting at the Kunsthochschule Weißensee in Berlin, one of the city's leading art academies, a position that placed him at the center of Berlin's teaching and studio culture for several years. In 1998 he received a scholarship from the state of Lower Saxony, and in 2014 he was artist-in-residence at CCA Andratx in Mallorca. His published catalogues include Sunny Side Up (2013), A Sense of Delight (2014), Heroes and Other Failures (2016), and Faces and Stuff (2019).

Grözinger's paintings are populated by a cast of recurring and invented figures: cartoonish characters, cuddly toys, humanoid machines, heroes, monsters, and mythological archetypes rendered in a palette that is at once seductive and unsettling. His visual language draws freely on the history of painting, from the Old Masters to expressionism and pop, recombining these references with an ironic lightness that never tips into mere pastiche. The result is a body of work that is as philosophically curious as it is visually immediate, one in which failure, longing, absurdity, and beauty coexist without resolution. Works such as Don't you forget about me (2023), Im Schatten erblüht der Wein (2023), True love will find you in the end (2024), and Angel (2024) exemplify the tonal range of his practice, moving between the comic and the elegiac with characteristic ease. A 2021 retrospective catalogue published by Nicole Gnesa Galerie opened with the provocation: "Philip Grözinger's paintings belong in Rome" — a claim that positions his work squarely within the long history of figurative painting while insisting on its contemporary urgency.

Grözinger's institutional exhibition history is extensive. His work was included in Paint it All. Aktuelle Malerei aus Berlinat the Berlinische Galerie (2022/23), one of the most significant surveys of contemporary Berlin painting in recent years. Further institutional presentations include Dissonanz. Plattform Germany at Kunsthaus Bethanien, Berlin (2022); a solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Bamberg, Die Schönheit des sinnlosen Scheiterns (2022); Welten Schöpfer. Richard Wagner, Max Klinger, Karl May at the Museum für bildende Künste, Leipzig (2013); Booster Art.Sound.Machine. at Museum Marta Herford (2014); and Wahrheiten. Zeitgenössische Kunst im Dialog mit alten Meistern at Bayer Kulturhaus, Leverkusen (2014), a group exhibition drawn from the SØR Rusche Sammlung. His work has also been shown at Choi & Choi Gallery in Seoul (2023), and in group exhibitions across Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, Italy, and the United States, including US, NO.TOWN beyond the wall: berlin artists in detroit at the Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Detroit (2012). His work is held in the SØR Rusche Sammlung, one of Germany's most significant private collections of contemporary figurative painting, and in the Kunstfonds of the Freistaat Sachsen.

Philip Grözinger is represented by KORNFELD Galerie Berlin. The gallery has presented his work in multiple formats over the years, including the group exhibition Berlin Calling: Works on Paper (2018), for which Grözinger served as co-curator and invited sixteen contemporary artists to present works on and with paper. Most recently, KORNFELD Galerie Berlin presented his solo exhibition Manntje, Manntje, Timpe Te at 68projects by KORNFELD in 2026. The gallery has also shown his work at Art Karlsruhe (2025), KIAF Seoul (2024), and Untitled Art Fair in Miami Beach (2024).

With each new body of work, Philip Grözinger deepens a practice that refuses easy categorization, one in which the absurd and the sincere, the monstrous and the tender, continue to negotiate a world that is always slightly stranger than it appears.