Eliza Wagener

Born 1994 in Hamburg, lives and works in Hamburg, Germany

2021 to 2022 Exchange at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris as part of the ASA program (Art School Alliance)

Since 2019 Studying painting at the HFBK Hamburg with Prof. Jutta Koether

2020 Bachelor of Arts (Illustration)

2016-2020 Studying illustration at HAW Hamburg


The artist, who studies at the HFBK Hamburg, relies in her works on the coincidences of her painting technique to take on them intuitively. Therefore she lets paint with a high water content flow in numerous streaks across the canvas so that the ultra-liquid glaze runs over the surface and initially creates a basic abstract, arbitrary painting field. The random traces of Wagener's formal preparation are the material dictum of the further process. On the basis of this arbitrariness, the artist's intervention brings shapes and figures out of the traces of the course.

The motifs thus created do not originate from a concrete painterly construction, such as a preliminary drawing or a previously conceived narrative concept. The artist understands her motif worlds much more as part of a found reality within the canvas. Like ghostly appearances, on the doorstep of perception, they seem to manifest themselves only for a period of time, like semi-transparent visitors. Melancholic in fairytale-like images, they link up with Wagener's personal emotional world. 

Niklas Koschel

Eliza Wagener, Trinkst du aus mir, wirst du ein Reh, 2023,

oil & acrylic on canvas, 136 x 112 cm

selected artworks
related exhibitions