Biography 015

Christiane Fichtner - Biography

Christiane Fichtner was born in 1974 to German diplomats living in Tokyo, Japan.

When she was 15 years-old, Christiane had a passionate affair with Yoshitomo Nara, a Japanese artist. Christiane became pregnant, but the child died shortly after birth. Christiane was overwhelmed with grief and tried to commit suicide. She spent three months in a psychiatric clinic. After she was released, she moved with her mother to Kyoto, where she discovered art. She lived and worked in the guesthouse of a temple. Christiane's extensive and diverse oeuvre has its origins in the large living room of that house.

The work that she did at the time was a 400-part series of images of flowers. These images were close-ups that combined the abstract with realism. One important image from this series was the study of a peony, which was shown at a group exhibition in Tokyo. The peony is portrayed from the front and is larger than life. It has only a few leaves and only one white blossom. This picture was bought by her previous lover, Yoshitomo Nara, who saw Christiane's pride and dignity in the unnaturally large flower.

Many of Christiane's works have autobiographical characteristics. Many of her sketches are self-portraits, or are portraits of her mother. She has also drawn a number of sketches of her premature baby, although she never actually saw it. These sketches have never been shown, however. She sees them as sketching exercises. She started learning about art and art history of the West and Europe while also learning about Ancient Japanese Art. It was never her intention to work toward creating realistic portraits. Instead, she was looking for the spirit of an image, but she never seemed able to find it.

She decided to go on journey in order to do a series of studies of the tea plantations of Uji. She painted a picture based on these numerous studies. The surface of the painting solely consists of the overlapping rows of tea bushes and their soft curves reflecting patches of light and shadow. This examination of light inspired her to do a study of cloud formations. To this day, she still paints pictures of the changing light conditions in the sky. She sometimes only uses pastel colors and does not depict clouds in concrete forms but only as fields of color made luminous through her brushwork.

She currently lives and works in seclusion in the Kosho-ji temple in Uji, Japan.

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