User:Vandepaerela/Silvia Steiger

Silvia Steiger (born 1940) is a conceptual visual artist living and working in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Originally German, she took on Dutch citizenship in June 1989. Steiger is known for her series ‘Daily Drawings’ in which she portrayed common things, like an egg, every day during five year in the 1970s. In the 80s she worked together with art center ‘De Appel’ in Amsterdam, to realise her project ‘Found signs from a landscape’. In the 90s her multiples ‘Body parts’ made of chocolate and marzipan, were a hit at art fairs in Amsterdam and Germany. After the turn of the century, she sought inspiration on the Greek island of Crete and found it in the island's floral beauty. In the 10s, Steiger discovered and explored the possibilities of digital art for her serial works.

Her retrospective in 2015 in Museum Belvédère in the Netherlands, was called ‘The necessity of a handstand’. Steiger's art is to be found in the Netherlands in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Museum Belvédère, Oranjewoud, Museum LAM, Lisse, Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede and several corporate and private art collections in the Netherlands and Germany.

Early life and education
Silvia Steiger was born in March 1940, in Linz, Austria, so her earliest childhood coincided with the Second World War. At that moment, her father worked as a surveyor building the Autobahn in German-occupied Austria. Her pregnant mother followed him to Austria, where Steiger was born. Over the next few years, her mother, fleeing the increasing violence of war, managed to find them safe shelter. First in occupied Alsace, later in the Rhineland. Eventually, after the war, the reunited family found a house in Cologne in 1945, where Steiger grew up.

In her teenage years her mother encouraged her to take up drawing. In 1957 during her final year of high school, Steiger saw a major exhibition of German artist Paula Modersohn Becker. The exhibition motivated her to apply for admission to art school. Her mother however, insisted that she would complete a vocational training first, in order to enable her to earn a living. In 1959, Steiger completed the School of Textile Design in Krefeld. During the following eight years, she managed to sell some of her designs to textile corporations. Together with a small additional scholarship she succeeded to finance her own studies at the Painting Department of the Düsseldorf Academy of Art (Kunstakademie Düsseldorf). After six years she obtained her Master's degree (Meisterschülerin) from Professor Ferdinand Macketanz in 1964.

Personal life
At the Düsseldorf Academy of Art, Steiger met her husband, visual artist Fritz Rahmann. After completing their studies in 1964, they couldn't find an affordable home and workspace in Düsseldorf. They decided to move to Friesland in the northern part of the Netherlands, a region they were familiar with from a sailing holiday some years earlier. They found a house in Hichtum, a village near Bolsward. They got acquainted quickly in the professional art circuit and participated in various exhibitions in galleries and museums in the region. In 1975 Steiger and Rahmann separated but their friendship and mutual professional support continued until his death in 2006.

In 1978, Steiger met her second partner Ruud van Ginkel, economist at a large steel company in the west part of the Netherlands. She moved there to live with him and they made many far away travels together. At the end of 1989, this relationship ended and Steiger settled down in Amsterdam.

Career
Steiger graduated from the Düsseldorf Academy of Art in 1964, with a series of painted still lifes of junk, left objects that caught her attention on the street. In the beginning of her career her work was driven by an aversion to the Wirtschaftswunder and the recovery of the upper middle class in West Germany. She painted commodities bourgeois society loved, electric chandeliers for example, in an increasing realistic style.

This critical attitude towards consumer society in her work of the 60s, shifted in the mid 70s to a systematic observation of common objects, such as a glass, marbles or an egg. She now wanted to harmonise with the object. Every day she made at least one drawing on A4-paper. This led to extensive series of these so called 'Daily Drawings', that aligned with conceptual art, where the emphasis was on the mental creative process and less on the visual aesthetics of the art object.. Some of these series were shown in several museums in The Netherlands.

In 1980, Wies Smals, director of art space ‘De Appel’ in Amsterdam, invited Steiger to collaborate on a project. De Appel provided support to artists who went beyond traditional categories in their work. Steiger had trained her artistic perception, working on the 'Daily Drawings' for years inside her studio. Now, she was ready to do the same in the open air, where she wanted to register the things she found with photography. 'Found signs from a landscape' took three years. De Apple hosted her project in 1984 in the Zuiderkerk, a former Protestant church in Amsterdam. The collaboration with De Appel was an incentive for the further recognition of Steiger's work. She was asked to make site-specific installations at Dutch and German art initiatives, run by fellow artists. She was also invited to give lectures at the Art Academy in Den Bosch. Since 1988, several grants from the Dutch government supported Steiger’s development.

From 1990 to 1995 she led 'Steiger 8 Multiples'. This art initiative, a platform for art objects in editions, participated with sometimes more than 10 different artists in several art fairs in the Netherlands and Germany.

From 1997 to 2004 Steiger worked twice a year on the Greek island of Crete. Her working conditions were very basic and for the first time since her graduation she started painting again. First series of her dog Oskar, then, inspired by the varied flora of the island, large series of paintings of flowers, blossoms and fruits. Some of these paintings were acquired in the first decade of the 21st century by corporate art collections, like the RABO and INGBank. Her work was represented by Gallery artKitchen in Amsterdam.

Since 2005 to the present, Steiger made a lot of independent works in different media. After a painful illness, she made many self-portraits. One is part of the collection of Rijksmuseum Twenthe in Enschede in the Netherlands. Getting older inspired her to make work on impermanence. In this period her working process changed a lot due to digitisation. The computer and digital photography opened new possibilities to work in a serial way. She made photo books and books with digital drawings. Facebook gave her means to communicate directly about her work with her network and public.

2015 Retrospective Museum Belvédère, The Netherlands
In 2015, Museum Belvédère, Oranjewoud/Heerenveen, the Netherlands organised a retrospective of Steiger's work. The show, a selection of 50 years of work, was called 'The Necessity of a Handstand'. This exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue with an introduction by Han Steenbruggen, director/curator of the museum and an essay by art historian Huub Mous. Steenbruggen indicated several reasons for this show. Museum Belvédère focused on artists mostly devoted to painting and drawing. Steiger's work had many manifestations and showed a free use of media and materials. This gave her great flexibility, resulting in a highly varied oeuvre. He expected this to be an refreshing experience for Museum Belvédère and it's public. He also wanted this show to draw attention to an almost forgotten period of modern art in Friesland. Steiger and her then partner Fritz Rahmann introduced conceptual art and its possibilities in the region. Steiger's work from this period was still quite relevant and deserved renewed attention. Together with recent work, 'The Necessity of a Handstand', showed to him an "ever-renewing artistry and at the same time a consistent body of work".

In his essay, Mous defined her works in the context of international art movements and art theory since 1960, like conceptual art and Fluxus. He also identified various themes that often recur in Steiger's work: coincidence and intuition; fear and shelter; trace and shadow; love and desire; consolation and healing. He observed one might say her oeuvre looks diverse - in terms of technique, (unconventional) materials, two- or three-dimensionality. But that in retrospect her body of work turns out to be quite coherent due to the recurring themes and her ability to visualise inner processes and transformation.

Work (a selection)
Steiger's collected work includes series of drawings and paintings, objects, (site-specific) installations, photographic works, books and multiples. This selection of 50 years work, gives an impression of the wide range of interests that are reflected in it.

Daily Drawings (1973-1978) During five year, Steiger focused on the daily observation of everyday objects. She recorded her observations in series of drawings and diary entries. During months she could follow an object in the changes that occurred from hour to hour. It’s smell, shape, colour, it all evoked it’s own associations. In this way she was in search of the essence, she told in an interview in 1977. Drawings of marbles for instance, were about introspective forms, those of a drinking glass about transparency and openness. This focus taught her not only about drawing. Steiger also discovered while working this way, that subjective perception changes in the course of time, depending on a person's mental state. As a result, she thought one could consider the drawings as psychograms. By reading them carefully her work became increasingly intuitive.

Found signs from a landscape (1980-1984) In 1979 Steiger finished her project ‘Daily Drawings’. She now wanted to work in the open air in a dune reserve near Castricum, her new recidence. Her aim was to register ‘signs’ appealing to her personally. She chose to work with photography: the camera speed allowed her to stay in the moment of observation. Her project in collaboration with 'De Appel' took three years. In this period she made 35 walks in the reserve and photographed objects that drew her attention. In 1984 Steiger presented her photographs in 35 strips on the 17th century stone floor in the Zuiderkerk in Amsterdam: their order in accordance with the walks and observations in the dunes. In the side wing of the church was a display case with the publication about the project, with silver rabbit droppings littered around it. The silver had been reclaimed from the fixing baths of the photo strips.

Site specific installations (1982-Present) In 1982, fellow-artist Thom Puckey invited Steiger to make a work in his art initiative 'Art & Behavior' in Amsterdam. She found a little rag toy belonging to Puckey's son in the large room, as well as some loose parts from the wooden floor. She used the floorboards to form a shelter for the little animal. She called the work 'Ansehen'/'Behold'. In general, Steiger’s site-specific installations consist of minor, subtle interventions. Some years later, in 1984, she participated in a project in De Fabriek in Eindhoven, and cleaned the quite dirty central floor of the art center in alternating lanes, like a football pitch.

Work through Telepathy (1984-1989) During five years, Steiger held 90 telepathic sessions with fellow-artist Karl Krüll while she was in Holland and he in Germany. They only agreed on the time and time span of the session and the art material that was going to be used on A4 paper. During these sessions Steiger produced drawings she completely didn’t understand. When the two works were put together, they sometimes showed a striking coherence. Fortyfive of these joint works are in the Museum of Contemporary Art Herne, Germany, 45 are in Steiger's collection.

Books (1987-Present) The artist's book About Including Love (1989) was acquired by the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1989. The book (68 x 68 cm) consists of 56 double pages. New images are achieved by swapping pages. Among other floral ornaments, Steiger applied drawings of structures of the white lily and used ultramarine in the book, both symbols of Holy Mary. In 2012, Steiger made ‘Landleven’/‘Countylife’ a book dedicated to the animals in her surroundings, while still living in Friesland. She reports on the confusion she experiences as a city girl, dealing with animals. She made a digital drawing to accompany each story and handled the design of the book herself.

Multiples (1990-Present) Since the 80s, Steiger allowed the emotion of the moment into her work. That might be tenderness, wonder or love, but also the impermanence of all life. When she started making multiples in the 90s, meant for private spaces, they were the ideal works to express the personal and narrative, often in a light, subtle or subversive way. The relatively small scale of her multiples challenged Steiger to explore and apply all kinds of materials: wax, silk, glass, photography, epoxy resin, leather etc. In 1991, a copy of a black-and-white photograph by Man Ray unintendedly emerged green-coloured from Steiger's copier. The image showed an upward looking eye with two glass teardrops underneath. She obtained green-coloured glass marbles and added some to a copy of the image in a small box and called the multiple ‘The Wallpaper Affair’. It became Steiger’s most preferred multiple, one hundred copies found their way to private and public collections.

Material for Installation (1993-Present) During 1993 and 1996, Steiger worked a lot with wax. She learned to make moulds of parts of her body. Her aim was to express inner processes, that might bring the observer clarification or consolation. She made dozens of works and called the series 'Häutingen'/ 'Moulting'. 'The 29 feet of the author is the most exhibited work in this series. She multiplied her feet into 29 casts and situated them in different ways, like in dance movements on the floor of art spaces. First she showed the work with marbles, later with elm seeds, a ball or a child’s scooter, depending on the conditions of the location.

Paintings (1997-2004) During this period Steiger worked twice a year in Crete in a hamlet at the Libyan Sea. For the first time since 1972, she was painting again. She made large pieces of flowers of the island: Gardenia, Blue Ipomea, Carnation, Hibiscus. She alternated the structure of the plants with monochrome colour fields and made environments with the canvases. In 2003, she worked in the tradition of her ‘Daily Drawings’, but now by painting the sea on small canvases. During 40 days of working on the balcony of her studio, she overlooked the water surface to the horizon of the Libyan Sea. The colours of the water changed continually. To grasp that, asked for a large quantity of paintings. She made 39 of them. For the 40th canvas she made a charcoal drawing of the Minoan labyrinth. She called the series 'Seascapes' or 'Seaview'.

Photographic works (1980-Present) Coincidence is an important issue in Steiger’s oeuvreand the fast shutter speed of the camera made photography a prime medium for her to capture it. The triptych 'Three of Them' originated in 2008. Steiger was walking through her studio when she saw her shadow on the wall. The three enlarged photos show shadows of three different gestures. Depending on how you look at them you may as well see three images of animals. During the first lockdowns of the Corona pandemic in 2020, Steiger edited photos of her face with a mouth mask and posted them almost daily on Facebook. At the same time she presented a selection of these photos in a slideshow, titled 'CoronaCorona, Staying at Home', in the digital exhibition 'Corona in the City' of the Amsterdam Museum. On August 25, 2020 Dutch daily newspaper Het Parool published 30 photos from the series in the column "De Verzameling/The Collection". Objects (1980-Present) The trigger for the object 'Nothing ever lost' (1992), was Steiger's consoling recognition that everything is subject to change, but nothing is lost. Scattered on a large draped triangle of dark green velvet lay 80 glass 'pebbles', resembling drops of water. Each pebble shows a photographic image. One sees everyday situations, like parents walking with their child; folded hands, a posing couple, a surf of the sea, etc. Based on this object, Steiger made a multiple as well. During a walk in the autumn of 2012, seeds of thistles stuck annoyingly to her clothes. This inspired Steiger to collect large quantities of them to make three objects. She gave them the shape and size of a toddler, each in a different posture and called them 'I Am Loveable Too'. She also made a multiple with the thistles - a little sitting teddy bear - titled 'Yours Forever'.

Objects to interact (1970-Present) In 1971, Steiger made her first object that encouraged the public to interact. The Cold War was still going on and she used army duffel bags to make a large ‘Bag for Fear’. She presented it with a written instruction how visitors could put their fear into the bag. For her retrospective in Museum Belvédère in 2015, she made ‘Ferwege My’/‘Move Me’, a large doll-like object the visitors could manipulate in all kind of positions. That asked for coöperation, communication and awareness. Alarmed by the migrant crisis in 2015, Steiger organised the installation/action ‘Silence is Silver/Speaking is Gold’ on the square next to the Van Gogh Museum and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. At that moment the Van Gogh Museum showed an exhibition about correspondences in the oeuvres of Van Gogh and Edvard Munch. Steiger demarcated a large part of the square with gold/silver rescue blankets and distributed sealed drawings of ‘The Cry’ of Munch. She invited passers-by to wrap up in a rescue blanket and have their portraits made by her. Most of them are smiling on their picture.

Work in public collections in the Netherlands

 * Amsterdam Museum, Amsterdam


 * Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam


 * Museum Belvédère, Oranjewoud/Heerenveen


 * LAM (Lisser Art Museum), Lisse


 * Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede


 * The Netherlands Cultural Heritage Collection, Amersfoort