Käthe Kruse was a member of the music and performance group “Die Tödliche Doris” from 1982 to 1987. The group became well-known far beyond the borders of Berlin. From 1990 to 1997, she studied Visual Communication at the Universität der Künste (UdK) in Berlin. She was also part Professor Heinz Emigholz’s Master Class. From 1982 onwards, she performed and had countless exhibitions in Tokyo, New York, Paris, Barcelona, Reykjavik, Malmö, Zurich, Vienna, Hamburg and Berlin, amongst other places.
Käthe Kruse offers three completely different styles of portrait:
Her photographic portraits are printed on Berolina flag material and stretched onto a frame. A slight enlargement in the size of the photo pixels occurs through printing on the material, creating portraits that lie somewhere between photography and painting.
For her striped portraits, she developed a unique colour system after learning all about star signs and their corresponding colour schemes from two different astrology books. In the two books, the colours stated for each month weren’t the same, so she merged the two theories into a 1:1 ratio.
Thus, for example, Aries is a mixture of yellow and red. The colours of the stripes come from the birth date of the person in the portrait. The results are striped pictures (acrylics on canvas), which could also be extended into a second design level on the wall (dispersion onto the wall). Size on request.
In her text portraits, all possible terms associated with everyday life from A-Z will be named, such as agility, beauty, chaos, dignity, empathy and so on. The first name of the person being portrayed will be added alphabetically, and the terms can be selected together. The text will be painted in black acrylic on canvas. The chosen monochrome background colour will be applied several times and then sanded down to create a smooth surface that stops the painted text from running. Stencils will not be used here, in order to achieve the highest possible level of vividness.