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Almut Heise is a contemporary German painter whose portraiture blends elements of the surrealist masters of the 1930’s with her own strikingly unique vision. She has been teaching art, in Germany as a professor, for almost 30 years.  What I like most about these particular paintings is how much they confirm my feelings about artists in my age cohort (I was born in 1941) in Germany.  They’re as uncompromising as Baader meinhoff; as direct as Joseph K’s arrest one fine morning; and as hard as industrial diamonds.    

There follows a brief biography of Ms. Heise at artnet’s Artist Works Catalogues and five of her portraiture paintings there.

“1944: Born in Celle, Germany. 

1965-1967: Studies painting with Günter König and Klaus-Jürgen Fischer at the staatl. Hochschulinstitut für Kunst und Werkerziehung in Mainz, Germany.  

1967-1970: Studies painting in Hamburg at …the…Hochschule der Künste with Gotthard Graubner, Paul Wunderlich, Allen Jones and David Hockney.

1970-1971:  Studies painting in London at the Royal College of Art with Peter Blake. 

1971-1972:  Scholarship in London, United Kingdom. 

1975:  (Receives the) Edwin-Scharff-Prize (in) Hamburg. 

1978-1979: Artist in residence at Villa Massimo, Rome, Italy. 

1978-2005:  Teaches as professor at the Fachhochschule Hamburg, Fachbereich Gestaltung. 

1989: Becomes member of the Freie Akademie der Künste, Hamburg, Germany. 

2000:  (Receives the) Kunst (prize) Finkenwerden. 

Currently:  Lives in Hamburg, Germany.”

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(Words in quotations and the images above are courtesy of the artist, and of artnet and its Artist Works Catalogues; to go there, click here.  At its AWC, there is this: “artnet offers these catalogues free to the public as an educational resource. Simply click on an individual artist's image to begin, and check back often to browse new catalogues.”)  

Authors Bio:
I have a law degree (Stanford, 66') but have never practiced. Instead, from 1967 through 1977, I tried to contribute to the revolution in America. As unsuccessful as everyone else over that decade, in 1978 I went to work for the U.S. Forest Service in San Francisco as a Clerk-Typist, GS-4. I was active in the USFS's union for several years, including a brief stint as editor of The Forest Service Monitor, the nationwide voice of the Forest Service in the National Federation of Federal Employees. Howsoever, I now believe my most important contribution while editor of the F.S.M. was bringing to the attention of F.S. employees the fact that the Black-Footed Ferret was not extinct; one had been found in 1980 on a national forest in the Colorado. In 2001 I retired from the USFS after attaining the age of 60 with 23 years of service. Stanford University was evidently unimpressed with my efforts to make USFS investigative reports of tort claim incidents available to tort claimants (ie, "the public"), alleging the negligence of a F.S. employee acting in the scope of his/her duties caused their damages, under the Freedom of Information Act. Oh well. What'cha gonna do?