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Angela Sommerhoff (born 1970 as Angela Wilde in Pforzheim, Baden-Württemberg) is a German contemporary artist. After finishing high school in 1990, she studied painting and sculpting from 1991-1995 in Vienna. She continued to study history of art at the University of Vienna (1995-1997). Currently, she lives and works in the countryside south of Munich (Germany) with her family, where her studio has been located since 2013.

Early life and education

Angela was born as the third out of seven children. Her mother Katherine Wilde from Seattle, Washington DC, and her father Dr. Klaus Wilde, a medical practitioner, put a lot of emphasis on the broad cultural education of their children. The family life was inspired by selected artworks from around the world and classical house concerts. Discovering her love for art early on, Angela initially started playing the violin as a six-year-old girl, before pursuing visual arts as a painter later on. At the age of ten, she joined a string quartet which performed so exceptionally well they were invited to compete in several musical competitions called “Jugend musiziert”. After finishing high school in 1990, Angela Sommerhoff toured Germany with several youth orchestras. In 1991, Angela began her art studies in Vienna, Austria at a private institution. Her work included both painting and sculpting. One of the main subjects of her studies at this time was metamorphosis, as well as the phenomenon of human color perception described in the theory of colors by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, which also influenced Philipp Otto Runge, J. M. W. Turner and Wassily Kandinsky. Angela continued her education with two years of art history at the University of Vienna. She married Christian Sommerhoff in 1997 in Vienna and gave birth to two daughters (Amanda Rebecca, 1997 and Daria Viola, 1999). Since her time in Austria, Angela Sommerhoff has worked as a freelance artist and displayed her art in numerous exhibitions in Europe. In 2007 the family moved to Bedford (NH), before relocating to Germany.

Present life

Since 2013, Angela Sommerhoff has worked in her studio in Bad Tölz, located in the Alpine foreland, south of Munich. Typically, she starts her work by playing Bach violin sonatas, as music has always been a major source of inspiration. Artists that have influenced her are Emil Nolde, Marc Chagall, Alexej von Jawlensky, and Mark Rothko, among others. Angela Sommerhoff strives to capture the beauty of a thought, an experience, or encounter she had. It is positivity and esthetics she endeavors, in a constructive and inspiring, non-placatory manner. While some artists send political messages, she wants her artwork to evoke enjoyable emotions or call upon lost memories. She believes in the creative core of any human being, which she addresses in a very subtle way with her abstract paintings. Apart from her artwork for exhibitions she is in great demand for remittance work. In addition to an impressive number of private collectors, the hospital “Klinikum Niederlausitz” north of Dresden acquired various series of her paintings.