“For us inland, the turnaround was tremendous […], we shed a skin, dropped a burden, there was a real bang.”
Brigida Böttcher was born in Zwickau (East Germany) in 1952. Having studied fine art in Leipzig, she worked as a freelance artist and ran a gallery with her husband for several years. Her painting “Flora geht” (Flora is leaving / Flora walking) placed environmental issues on the Berlin Wall.
Brigida Böttcher in the interview
Böttcher’s painting “Flora geht” (Flora is leaving / Flora walking) depicts a paradise-like place fenced in by a red-and-white railing. Flora, the Roman goddess of spring, seems to be just leaving. It was, and still is, important to Böttcher that her art serves as a reminder of how human behaviour threatens the future of the planet. She renovated her painting in 2009.
Böttcher turned her interest to art and nature at an early age as an escape from the grey, industrial surroundings of her hometown Zwickau. In the 1970s Böttcher studied fine art at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, taking a master’s degree under Bernhard Heisig. She later worked extensively with clay. She lives with her husband Wolfgang Böttcher in Muschwitz near Leipzig.