Ute Wöllmann on the artistic position of Ulrike Bröcker, February 2025
Ute Wöllmann zur künstlerischen Position
von Ulrike Bröcker, Februar 2025
The swinging of the landscape
Ulrike Bröcker paints a landscape that she feels deeply connected to, one with which she has built an intimate relationship. She lets her intense visual experiences and inner emotional responses to nature flow directly into her brushstrokes, creating color-drenched atmospheric paintings. Her landscapes are places of longing, refuge, and retreat. Striking mood landscapes where contours blur, and landscape zones dissolve into horizontal bars and waves of color. Brushstrokes emancipate themselves from the landscape reference and transform into pure artistic gestures. Energetic brush swings and color gestures intertwine to form a vibrating surface. What seems so light and natural requires long, focused preparation and contemplative immersion to ensure every gesture fits perfectly into the image. The color swirls represent, on one hand, the driving forces of nature, but also the abstraction power of the artist, who transcends a mere depiction of a landscape. On the other hand, they represent the dynamic force of a gaze that seeks to penetrate nature. Through this gaze, we, as viewers, see nature anew: it pulls us into an image world where color resonates with the landscape. Ulrike Bröcker demonstrates a sensitive awareness of delicately composed color tones and color harmonies, with an interest in the play of colors more than the motif itself. In this way, Ulrike Bröcker offers us a sensitive visual experience and an intense emotional encounter in front of her paintings. She has successfully re-invented Romanticism in its best sense. For this achievement, I am very pleased to appoint Ulrike Bröcker as my master student and am confident that her paintings will captivate many.
Ulrike Bröcker paints a landscape that she feels deeply connected to, one with which she has built an intimate relationship. She lets her intense visual experiences and inner emotional responses to nature flow directly into her brushstrokes, creating color-drenched atmospheric paintings. Her landscapes are places of longing, refuge, and retreat. Striking mood landscapes where contours blur, and landscape zones dissolve into horizontal bars and waves of color. Brushstrokes emancipate themselves from the landscape reference and transform into pure artistic gestures. Energetic brush swings and color gestures intertwine to form a vibrating surface. What seems so light and natural requires long, focused preparation and contemplative immersion to ensure every gesture fits perfectly into the image. The color swirls represent, on one hand, the driving forces of nature, but also the abstraction power of the artist, who transcends a mere depiction of a landscape. On the other hand, they represent the dynamic force of a gaze that seeks to penetrate nature. Through this gaze, we, as viewers, see nature anew: it pulls us into an image world where color resonates with the landscape. Ulrike Bröcker demonstrates a sensitive awareness of delicately composed color tones and color harmonies, with an interest in the play of colors more than the motif itself. In this way, Ulrike Bröcker offers us a sensitive visual experience and an intense emotional encounter in front of her paintings. She has successfully re-invented Romanticism in its best sense. For this achievement, I am very pleased to appoint Ulrike Bröcker as my master student and am confident that her paintings will captivate many.
Master student exhibition - February 28, 2025
Ulrike Bröcker. Landscape as a place of longing
The exhibition comprises around thirty works, e.g. large-format canvas paintings in oil as well as some works on paper, which were created over the last two years during her Master's degree at the Akademie für Malerei Berlin. They illustrate the painter's current artistic position. On this evening, Ulrike Bröcker will give a lecture on her paintings and situate them within contemporary painting. All paintings are for sale.
Schillerstraße 34, 10627 Berlin, opening hours at www.a-f-m-b.de
The exhibition comprises around thirty works, e.g. large-format canvas paintings in oil as well as some works on paper, which were created over the last two years during her Master's degree at the Akademie für Malerei Berlin. They illustrate the painter's current artistic position. On this evening, Ulrike Bröcker will give a lecture on her paintings and situate them within contemporary painting. All paintings are for sale.
Schillerstraße 34, 10627 Berlin, opening hours at www.a-f-m-b.de
Ute Wöllmann, Berlin 2020
“The value of a picture”, Ute Wöllmann
Last Friday was Ulrike Bröcker's public presentation for admission into the main course of study.
This is an important milestone on the path toward developing one’s own artistic position. It involves pausing to reflect and summarize the recent creative period in a lecture. Where was I a year ago? What did I paint over the past year? Which courses did I attend? How is the influence of my instructors visible in my work? Have I painted enough? What even counts as enough? Where do I stand now? How can my development be seen? Which artists were important to me? What exactly do I appreciate about their work? How do I differ from them? What are my goals for the coming year?
Selecting and hanging artworks for the Friday evening presentation to illustrate the lecture is often a very intense and personal experience. The evening is public. It’s a different setting compared to critiques held during regular studies, which are already nerve-wracking enough. The character of a public presentation—even if it's just for one evening—is more official. Fellow students, friends, and acquaintances often attend; they are frequently the very first supporters on the artistic journey. But there are also unfamiliar guests. Seeing them all gathered in front of your own work and receiving positive feedback is an encouraging experience—after all, this is the future of an artist!
It becomes euphoric and deeply gratifying when works are sold during such a first presentation! In Ulrike Bröcker’s case, eight paintings of various sizes were sold that evening—ranging from 10 x 10 cm to the main piece, measuring 130 x 190 cm, displayed on the front wall. Congratulations! There is hardly a better form of support for an artist than purchasing their work.
Purchasing a piece at a public presentation is also a delightful experience for the buyers, as the works are extremely affordable! After all, one is still a student—not yet a fully established artist. Much will change in the coming years. Being an early buyer is often the foundation of a first small collection that accompanies an artist’s development.
At the next public presentation, the works will already be more expensive, and by the end of the course, we will have reached entry-level prices for the professional art market. Even those prices will still be affordable compared to artists who are firmly represented by galleries, have a strong résumé and exhibition record, have received awards and/or scholarships, and are regularly featured at art fairs. All of these are value-enhancing factors that are reflected in the prices of professional artists. Artists who ignore or are unaware of these pricing principles reveal themselves as unprofessional and are typically not taken seriously by the professional art market.