Michael Schreiber was born on 4th March, 1949 in Bremen. He received his artistic training with Professor Mayer at the Fachhochschule Bielefeld (University Bielefeld) and the Hochschule für Bildende Künste (University of Fine Arts) in Berlin, where he was a Meisterstudent (master student) of Professor Petrick. From 1997 to 1999, Michael Schreiber was professor for painting and its fundamental elements at the Fachhochschule Bielefeld. As a freelance painter and graphic artist he had already achieved great success in the art market.

Michael Schreiber had his centres of life in Berlin and in Italy, his adopted country, the mood-charged atmosphere of the latter being reflected in many of his works.

Schreiber’s talents lay in the picturesque – either in large-format oils on canvass or in small water colours. For his graphic works he preferred the technique of lithography, as this printing process from stone is closest to the art of painting. But also his drawings reveal the artist’s mastery.

Schreiber’s works are mood paintings. They play with skilfully selected perspectives and lyrically staged reflexes of colour and light. His most current landscapes – endless fields and tree lined lanes – offer the viewer a place of rest and sojourn. They extend into great depth in the form of deserted space – natural, sensuous and rough. Transient impressions are captured in the works of Michael Schreiber in skilful and masterly compositions. Although the portrayals are representational, they are nevertheless distanced from reality in that they eliminate the dimension of the temporal and transitory. Based on compositions of various axes and horizontal lines, the individual elements of the pictures, due to their colours rich in nuances, form a harmonious entity. Again and again, the various elements, such as air, water and earth, merge into one another.

However, Michael Schreiber was not only a painter of landscapes. His spectrum also includes numerous portraits, musical studies and architectural presentations. Repeatedly, Italian stately buildings, facades of houses and loggias appear as motifs, and enter into a symbiosis with the natural vegetation surrounding them. In these works as well, the artist endeavours to capture the light in paint.

Michael Schreiber transports the viewer into a world of painted illusions. These works of the artist are a sensitive request for abandonment to nature and art, and convince with their captivating mood and with masterly techniques. In a lyrical understanding, the artist formulates what he saw, but above all, the atmospherically experienced richness and substance of a peaceful nature, and thus touches at the very roots of human existence.

Michael Schreiber died in Italy in July 2012.