Sebastian Burger DE, b. 1980

Sebastian Burger is an artist associated with the New Leipzig School, a movement that marked a return to figurative painting. His practice encompasses everything from small-scale paintings and drawings to large-format works in oil on canvas, paper, wood and aluminium.

Burger’s paintings depict people, animals, mythical figures and other enigmatic characters, usually situated in unfamiliar and mysterious surroundings. His works are infused with ironic references to 19th-century German painting, Surrealism and fantasy.

Through his paintings, Sebastian Burger offers a glimpse into a world composed of disparate elements and fragments that seemingly have nothing in common, yet can be observed as they gradually move towards one another. Within this universe, the artistic appropriation of the world through drawing transcends its purely narrative dimension, developing its own distinct attitude and atmosphere. His deliberate return to Romantic pictorial compositions, ghostly fables and grotesque anecdotes can be read, in many of his works, as a carefully considered commentary on the heated debates and discourses of contemporary society.

Sebastian Burger began studying graphic arts and printmaking at the Vienna School of Art in 2001. From 2003 to 2009, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst), joining Neo Rauch’s painting class in 2005, where he completed his diploma. He subsequently continued as a Meisterschüler (master student) under Neo Rauch from 2010 to 2012. Between 2012 and 2013, he received a working grant from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including:

Sebastian Burger lives and works in Leipzig and Berlin, Germany.