A STORY OF LIGHT  I work in the field of art practice-based lighting research.
The aim here is to solve specific questions and problems. Observations of nature  and their questioning are an important part of my conceptual work.  

Over the centuries and across all religious boundaries, light has retained a highly symbolic character.
“The myth of light is completely timeless”
Light is not so much that which reveals something - rather it is the revelation itself.
My works are intended to provide a counterpoint to our fast-moving times.
encourage us to linger, to pause, to perceive ourselves,
in a habitable illusion in harmony with oneself and what one sees.
Our sensory perception, its cultural, intercultural and individual weighting is part of this process.  

A Story of Light - is a story of light.
Each of the works could inspire you to verbalize your very own story.
You can also look at it scientifically: What is light ?
Light is a form of electromagnetic radiation.
When light hits matter, it can be scattered, reflected, refracted and slowed down,
or absorbed.
My technique is about refraction and reflection at the same time. It is the basis for my creative work.
Even if the works have a scientific background, they do not lose their poetry.
their poetry.
Light masters of past epochs such as Tiepolo, Monet and above all Turner have influenced my work with their experiences.  

The concept of most of the paintings is very complex.
My sketchbooks are the basis for each painting. They are studies of abstract preparatory work and the recording of experiences.
These sketchbooks have existed since 1993 with the question: Does art enable the sensual experience of an intangible moment?  experience of an intangible moment? It is about the open-ended, direct
with the material, the place and the world of experience. With these experiences and the knowledge gained, a space of experience is created that leads me  practice-oriented.  


On this path of putting something into the picture with the means of painting in order to give the motif
depth, a before and after - to create a new insight and outlook and to generate
to create a powerful stillness.  


Helene B. Grossmann

The works of Helene B. Grossmann explore the theme of light in a painterly way, and they are at the same time a manifestation of the painterly. In her works she has been giving expression to her artistic imagination for three decades and has found a highly independent painterly language. Her works seem to glow from within and also change their appearance in color depending on the intensity and quality of the surrounding light. Colors that initially appear dominant weaken as the light conditions change, while others become more prominent. In this way, the picture is in motion, even permanently changing - in interaction with the respective individual perception and mood of the viewer - and constantly shows an apparently new composition.

Helene B. Grossmann works almost exclusively in groups of works that are understood as reflections on the theme or a reference (to an artist, a landscape, a conception, for example). There is a close interaction between the individual groups of works, which are interwoven and interconnected by recurrences or revivals. Thus, at first glance, the oeuvre as a whole appears to be of great consistency, showing subtle gradual changes over a long period of time. This great consistence of the oeuvre results from a very organic development, which does not testify to a slow progression, but to the high intensity by which the artist explores color and light in painting. Observing the works of Helene B. Grossmann, they are, of course, predominantly abstract color painting, virtuoso use of pigment, surface and structure. These color fields alternate between opaque surface and subtle transparency. They play with space and its openness, with the appearance of things and landscapes that remain intangible. The viewer imagines himself confronted with appearances and movements that he can never fully grasp. In Helene B. Grossmann's work, color becomes a carrier of light, and light, although physically matter, gives an idea of the immaterial. It is characteristic of human perception that it attempts to interpret what it perceives and to integrate it into what it has already experienced. Such representationalism and associativity, to which Grossmann certainly paves the way through some landscape-like depictions or the titles of the paintings, is of course legitimate, but it does not play an important role in her painting. The absence of figurativeness in these paintings is nevertheless never completely abstract or non-representational. Grossmann's painting may be reminiscent of the representational, the experienced, the materially present, but it does not "signify" it. It is painting of the essence, insofar as it promotes an essential, original experience in the perception of color and light. In this way, the spirit is with itself, and it ends the physicality from which sensual perception arises: perceiving is being. As early as the 1930s, John Dewey noted that sensory impression and thought interact in aesthetic perception: they are inseparable in this respect. According to Dewey, the viewer incorporates his or her own world of feeling, thought, and memory into the actual experience of perceiving an image. Helene B. Grossmann actively invites this multi-layered response with her painting. She creates paintings of such incredible sensitivity and not only subjective mutability that invite the viewer to integrate what he sees into his own holistic sensation. They open doors of perception, through which the viewer at the same time arrives at a perception of himself, as the painter herself has expressed it: “I create associations, and then the work of the viewer begins.”

Dr. Ralph Melcher studied art history and literature. He received his doctorate in 1997.

For some considerable time now I have been following the life and work of Helene B. Grossmann with the greatest attention and admiration. I have been to see all her exhibition in recent years, in Küssnacht an der Rigi, in Basel, and most recently in Zug. 

What is it that makes this artist so important, so significant? Without a doubt, it is her magnificen and breathtaking depiction of light. She has painted this light in numerous pictures: in grey, red and above all blue tones, in small-scale works and very large ones. 

It is for this reason that my colleague and friend from Munich, Raimund Thomas, rightly compares her to Seurat, Tiepolo, Turner and Monet…I would go even further. Helene B. Grossmann succeeds, time and again, in bringing light into her painting, making in the dominant feature. And so we stand in front of her work, deeply moved, constandly amazed at the force of her images.

The artist`s biography shows how many importent exhibitions in Germany and Switzerland have featured her works. May she continue in this vein and remain with us for a long time. This is my heartfelt wish for her and for all of us.

Christoph Vitali is a Swiss exhibition curator, museum director and art writer. From 1985 to 1993 he was director  of the Schirm Kunsthalle, Frankfurt. In 1994 he was appointed director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich until 2004, when he became director of the Beyeler Foundation in Riehen near Basel. He moved to Bonn in 2008 to become director of the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Christoph Vitali lived in Zurich.

We are accustomed to looking at pictures, but looking at Helene B. Grossmann`s pictures is an experience of an entirely different kind. From our first eye contact, we forget our role as viewers. We are immediately tauchet to the soul and magically drawn into, or rather out of, profound, gratifying and light-filled infinity.

„And my soul spread
wide its wings
and flew o`er the silent lands
as if it were flying home.“

Thus wrote Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788-1857) in his poem "Mondnacht"("Moonlit Night"). He had doubtless also seen such pictures in his mind`s eye. But if as the viewer I return to reality, I see clouds, perhaps water and mist, and in all cases the Impression of a landscape, which however immediately turns back into a basic manifestation, both figuratively and literally.

What repeatedly and increasingly captivates me is the central light, partly concentrated and dazzling, partly diffuse and translucent. Incredibly, Helene B. Grossmann actually manages to paint light, this incomprehensible fluid that is so volatile and yet so powerful and impossible to materialise. Light ! What a subject ! It is not the light of Rembrandt or Georges de la Tour. The light here is not lamplight but the ultimate essence in its profound being. Seurat came close to it in his black-and-white drawings, and it was fascinatingly achieved by just a few really great European painters such as Tiepolo, Turner and Monet.

How many painters have struggled since the start of the twentieth century to represent pure colour without the strait-jacket of form ? I do not know anyone who has attempted to convey the much more volatile and distant medium of light to viewers, or, as I suggested at the beginning,to draw them into it and to illuminate them. That is possible only againstthe background of an intuitive show, an honest modesty, an eruptive force and a mature ability.

Raimund Thomas is a Munich-based German art dealer and gallery owner specialising in modern and contemporary art.

Trying to convey a verbal impression of the works of Dresden-born artist HELENE B. GROSSMANN is, to put it mildly, presumptuous. Even an illustration is not really helpful because it cannot convey what happens after about 10 seconds of looking at a picture - with the picture and with the viewer.

For over 40 years, this artist has devoted herself to the fascination of "light" in her paintings. It is not about the luminosity of a single color or the illumination of things - it is about the purest, non-materializable, incomprehensible and constantly moving essence of the medium of light. Helene B. Grossmann is in the best tradition and communication with painters such as Tiepolo, Caspar David Friedrich, Turner and Monet. Her personal achievement in comparison to these great "light painters" lies in her complete detachment from the object and its recognition value - in this respect, therefore, more akin to Rothko.

The associations with landscape, clouds, water, fog and horizon naturally arise, but they do not become meaningless relatively quickly due to the deeper insight that sets in, but they do become secondary.

Viewing a work by the artist is an experience of a special kind: the special painting technique, in which up to 180 layers of acrylic are laid on top of each other, makes the light seem to move, pulsate and spread beyond the canvas format. As the lighting conditions in the room change, the entire aura of the painting changes, and deeper layers of the painting suddenly gain influence. At night, when every light source is switched off, you can no longer see any colors, but the picture still "shines".

The associations and interpretations of this type of painting go in the most diverse directions, as the theme of "light" has an enormous sensory and symbolic power in both physical and metaphysical terms.

We do not want to overuse big words here, but in the works of HELENE B. GROSSMANN one finds a pictorial equivalent of "faith, love, hope". Detached from any institutional or denominational affiliation, her works resonate with the great questions about the purpose and meaning of life, about content, freedom, strength, destiny, trust, security, belonging and authenticity. These are questions that have been asked for centuries and that demand answers time and again. HELENE B. GROSSMANN's art is one of them.

Sybille Nütt, Gallery Sybille Nütt / Dresden