Katharina Grosse is best-known for her expansive in-situ paintings, in which she paints directly onto architecture, interiors and landscapes to create vivid, haptic environments. Her bold large-scale paintings propose a direct bodily experience, jolting the viewer towards a new understanding of our relationship to place and to each other. From June 5 to September 14, 2025, Deichtorhallen Hamburg will present Grosse’s major work Wunderbild, accompanied by a new spatial installation developed especially for Hamburg. The exhibition will also feature a selection of studio paintings as well as drawings and sketch books, that are on view for the first time, and will be complemented by the world premiere of a new documentary film by Claudia Müller, offering special insights into Grosse’s studio process.

Wunderbild
Katharina Grosse will transform the 3,000-square-meter Hall for Contemporary Art with Wunderbild, an expansive painting which embraces sculptural and architectural elements. Measuring over 60 meters in length, Wunderbild takes the form of an imposing enfilade of paintings on loose cloth, draped from the ceiling on two sides. First presented at the National Gallery in Prague in 2018, Katharina Grosse restages her large-scale artwork in Hamburg and supplements it with a new sound piece composed especially for the work by Stefan Schneider, resulting in a unique immersive experience of color and sound.

Wunderbild marks a significant shift in the artist’s practice. It is the first and only time Katharina Grosse has worked with stencils on a surface of this scale. The resulting empty sections within the complex layered painting act like windows into imaginary spaces and lend the work a distinctly architectural character. The shifts between painted and unpainted passages that both project and recede, open the work to a variety of interpretations and associations, transforming the exhibition environment into a living space of reflections as visitors move through the work.

„As a child, I used to play a game with myself: before I was allowed to get out of bed, I had to ‘paint away’ all the shadows on the wall, the window sill or the lamp – using an invisible brush. I was obsessed with this game. For me, observing the world has always gone hand in hand with acting within, with or upon it,” says Katharina Grosse.

“Wunderbild is by far Katharina Grosse’s largest portable painting. There are only a few institutions worldwide capable of presenting a work of this scale. Therefore, we are thrilled to make this spectacular installation accessible to a wide audience this summer at Deichtorhallen Hamburg. Katharina Grosse’s fascinating installations offer something for everyone – from the youngest to the oldest, whether deeply engaged in art or entirely new to it,” says Dirk Luckow, Artistic Director of Deichtorhallen Hamburg.

New work
A further highlight of the exhibition is the Earthwork, a newly conceived spatial work developed specifically for Deichtorhallen Hamburg in the rear section of the hall. Here, Grosse transforms the exhibition space into a walkable landscape of hills, turning the ground into a canvas. The painted terrain forms a striking contrast to the suspended fabric panels of Wunderbild. Colour extends across the floor and continues organically over sculpted mounds of earth.

Studio Paintings, film and archive materials
In addition to the Wunderbild and the new Earthwork, the exhibition presents six large-scale studio paintings from 2005 to 2024 – some up to nine meters wide – archival materials, including sketchbooks and drawings as well as a documentary by filmmaker Claudia Müller. Shown for the first time, the film accompanies Katharina Grosse throughout her working process in her Brandenburg studio, offering intimate insights into the physical and mental dimensions of her practice.

About the artist
One of the most important painters of today, Katharina Grosse (b. 1961, Freiburg, Germany) is internationally recognised for her bold, haptic paintings and saturated use of colour. Her expansive in situ paintings have been commissioned by institutions including MoMA PS1 in New York, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, and Centre Pompidou, Metz. Her work is held in major collections internationally including MoMA, New York; Buffalo AKG Art Museum; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Albertina Museum, Vienna; Kunsthaus, Zurich and the Nationalgalerie Berlin.