Moving Gallery / EINMAL – Anne Schillings

Almost a year after her successful exhibition KODAMA, Anne Schillings presents new work at Moving Gallery, Utrecht, opening Saturday 31 January. The exhibition, titled EINMAL, reveals what can emerge in a short span of time when an artist fully immerses herself in memory, seclusion, and concentration.

Anne Schillings paints in a style that could be described as contemporary expressionist: personal, intense, and layered. Emerging from her quiet persona, a vivid exuberance unfolds across the canvas—in large-scale paintings as well as small, festive panels. Much like Edvard Munch, she paints not so much what she sees, but what she remembers and has experienced. Her imagery stems from memory, emotion, and her immediate surroundings.

The volume of new work Schillings has managed to create since her debut solo exhibition KODAMA is striking. With EINMAL, she takes the next step: more confident, freer, and even more personal.

Artist-in-residency in Germany

Like her previous exhibition, EINMAL is rooted in an international artist-in-residency. Schillings spent several months at the Künstlerhaus Schloß Plüschow in Northern Germany, working in seclusion on a new series of paintings.
The title EINMAL evokes the German Es war einmal—“once upon a time”—the classic opening of a fairy tale. Schillings' paintings likewise feel like the beginning of a story. They are richly detailed landscapes and interiors in which viewers can wander alongside the painted figures. At the same time, the title evokes the individual—the person on their own—echoing Schillings' way of working and living.