Gabriele Liffers was born on 3rd November, 1952 in Düsseldorf. From 1973 to 1979,  she received her artistic education by studying at the Fachhochschule für Kunst und Design (Professional School for Art and Design) in Cologne. During her studies, the young artist specialized in the graphic techniques of etching and lithography. Today, Gabriele Liffers is a freelance painter, as well as a project teacher. National institutions and schools, and her own studio offer the artist and her students possibilities for an active exchange and  of communication about art, and the multiplicity of its development.

As she had studied graphic arts, Gabriele Liffers maintained her love for paper as a painter. This preferred medium is processed in specially developed procedures and techniques. Liffers highlights the basic material with various substances which serve, plasterlike, as the structural basis for her pictures. They enliven the superimposed layers of colour and drawn outlines. In an interaction of structure, line and colour, works are created which, on the one hand, are dynamic and lively, and on the other have a calming effect, due to fine nuances of the rhythms of colour. This individually developed technique leads to a high degree of recognition in the oeuvre, and the special effect of fascination, even with large format works on canvass.

As for motifs, the works are abstract and figurative. Gabriele Liffers processes moods and impressions, she reduces her own experiences to their basic contents. In this artistic reduction lies the claim to move the recipient into focussing on each and every one of her works, and to move actively onto a plane of communication. There remains a wide open field of possible interpretations. The artist does not wish to explain or dictate, quite the adverse, she actually plays with the viewer’s imagination. The figures, often in shadowy outlines, are de-individualized, faceless and sexless. They inhabit and enliven the pictorial world like mysterious actors, whose mysteriousness one endeavours to unravel.

Numerous travels, either privately or within the scope of public scholarships, brought the artist to remote regions of the world; impressions gathered and gained, are reflected in her pictures. Study tours, for instance, to Israel and Tibet, influence the artist’s creations, far beyond the time of her stay there.

Gabriele Liffers is constantly in search of new inspirations. Frequently, series of pictures are the result, which show her versatile approach to a theme, either based on impressions of a foreign country, literary or theatre studies, or else, general artistic questions posed as to the relationship between “figure and space”, “time and space” or similar issues.

However, common to all pictures is a restfulness and harmony emanating from almost non-intrusive colours and delicate nuances. They are never pale, but elegant and graceful in fine colour combinations, within which the figurative beings move, and melt into an non-elaborate and yet expressive and meaningful picture. They are peaceful and detached from all everyday problems.

Vita

1952    Year of birth
1973-1979    Studies at the Fachhochschule für Kunst und Design, Cologne; main fields etching, lithography
1976    Stay with the ceramist John Terragni (Denmark)
1979-1985    Birth of her three children

Since 1983        Art Director at a Volkshochschule (Adult Education Centre) in the areas                               
                                of etching and water colours
       1994-1995       Guest seminar at the Kunsthochschule  (University of the Arts) Berlin,
                                stone lithography

1999    Stay in Israel – Ein Hod



Exhibitions                     Bonn
                        Düsseldorf
                        Arhus, Denmark
                        Hannover
                        Bad Münstereifel
                        Ratingen
                        Brühl
                        Essen
                        Detmold