Rosemarie Trockel

* 1952

Rosemarie Trockel was born in 1952 in Schwerte (North Rhine-Westphalia). From 1974 to 1978 she studied painting with Werner Schriefers at the Kölner Werkschulen. She lives and works in Berlin.

The value of artistic practice and the social position of women are central issues in Rosemarie Trockel’s work. She explores visual techniques, consumer products, logos, signs and symbols, questioning their meanings and exposing prejudices, contradictions and power structures.
She gained recognition in the mid-1980s for her seemingly minimalist pictorial objects made from machine-knitted fabrics. In addition to knitted pictures, knitted garments and wall objects made from standard hotplates, her extensive oeuvre also includes drawings, prints, photographs, ceramics, as well as films and installations.

Trockel has participated in most major international exhibitions, including documenta in Kassel and the Skulptur Projekte in Münster. In 1988 she held a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and, in 1999, she became the first woman to present work in the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.