The artist Isabella Schels, born in Lower Bavaria, comes from film, from television. She still shoots reports for Bayerischer Rundfunk and won the Grimme Online Award in 2014 with an internet project.
Timo Frasch
Political correspondent in Munich.
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With such a history, of course, the probability of having an eye for the pictorial power of the everyday world increases. Schels has been painting since she was able to hold a pencil, and it became more professional when she illustrated her children's book "Crazy as Mary" herself three years ago.
In 2019, she roamed New York, saw through a window how a woman, apparently expecting an evening party, was arranging huge flowers. The idea for her flower sculptures, which she photographically snatches from transience and sells as prints, was not born on a flower meadow in Lower Bavaria, but in the metropolis that evokes few organic associations apart from its nickname "Big Apple".
The flowers are reminiscent of surrealists and pop art
It is not an art to recognize human traits in dogs or bunnies, it is different with a dandelion or a gerberas. Schels, once editor of the ARD series "Rote Rosen", succeeds in a playful way that evokes memories of the Surrealists, Pop Art, Jeff Koons and – not far away from him – Ken and Barbie.
Great artist Markus Lüpertz liked the gems so much that he accepted Schels into a class at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kolbermoor. Meanwhile, she is already working on her next project: bosom flowers. With this body-hugging variation of alpine costume fashion in the tradition of "Liberalitas Bavariae", Schels consistently continues her path from children's book illustrator to adult artist.