The Artist Edit

Since our collection Atelier Azur revolves around art, we are spotlighting six artists whose works deeply fascinates us. From painting to writing, from being inspired by ones dreams to dealing with the modern working world.

Find out more about the artists and their work here!

"Dreams play an important role in my artistic work, especially in phases that mark a turning point" says Petra von Kazinyan, who lives and works in Vienna and Frankfurt am Main. This is also how one of the most famous works of the artist, who has already exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Art Beijing and Art Austria, came about. For example, in a dream she was looking for a painting of a fictitious exhibition, but could not find it - and thereupon realised it herself. "As a child, I already felt the need to capture in pictures everything that moved me or touched me deeply," she says. Her works oscillate between figuration and abstraction; in terms of content, she deals with concepts of identity in the digital age and the importance of the ego. Her followers can get an insight into her everyday art life and current exhibitions on the Instagram account @petravonkazinyan.

"The search for the essential, the growing urge to reduce and calm down" - this is how Aliya Abs outlines the themes that significantly influence her works. And: emotions. She brings these onto the canvas in the form of figures, people or even lines. "My art is contemporary, dreamy and a little naive," she says. The motif of the cat, the favourite animal of her late husband and father of both children, is also found again and again in her works. It all started in her childhood, "as a teenager I devoured books on art history and did everything I could to get into the national art academy in my home town of Lviv. She ultimately graduated with honours, and since 2010 she has been living in Munich as a freelance artist and also shares her work on Instagram under @aliyaabs.art.

Traditional elements from China mixed with Western modernity - that is the art of Haiying Xu. Her works are about the search for identity, about the connection between East and West. "I could never paint something that doesn't trigger excitement in me," she says. She has loved to paint since kindergarten and was encouraged by her mother from childhood. Today, she shares her art on her Instagram account @haiying.xu.188, among others. "I hope that my art touches the viewers - through the composition, but also the content, the colour, the brushstrokes, the form. My character, my passion, my whole life is in it," says Haiying.

"My plant paintings are a window to the wildly proliferating nature," says Lara-Maria Lufen herself about her works. And anyone who looks at them immediately understands what she means. They are bursting with vitality, diversity and joie de vivre. "A remedy for the sad spirit", as she herself writes on her Instagram account @the.artofbeing about one of the pictures. These are always about the cycle of life, the blossoming followed by the passing. In the creative process, the journey is the goal for Lara-Maria. "I went in search of ways in which I could express devotion and intuition, an activity that is not about results or outcomes." This is how she eventually found painting, but also dancing and singing, which are still her creative outlets - or "portals" as she calls them.

„"I never thought I would write a book - it felt like an unrealistic dream for a long time," says Sara Weber. And yet her first non-fiction book "The world is ending and I still have to work?" was recently published. As a journalist, she has always had her eye on all topics related to work, the economy and digitalisation. "That might sound dry and boring at first glance, but we are all part of the economy: because we work, consume and drive innovation," says the German-American. She is not only interested in criticising the status quo, but above all in constructive approaches to solutions, for example for the problems of the current world of work, and the question: "How can we make things better - for as many people as possible? Then as now, she has a weakness for books, which she borrows in piles from libraries - in the past analogue, today digital. You can experience the studied publicist and book scholar live on her current reading tour, and she shares exciting insights into her everyday work on the Instagram account @sara__weber.

What you should know about Leila Lallali? "My studio is as small as my largest canvas, and from the kitchen counter to the kitchen table. And although my name sounds made up, it's not." After studying fashion in London and acting in New York, the self-taught artist initially had little time for her passion. But then came the pandemic, and with it more freedom for art. "It is very playful, based on the rediscovery of childlike lightness. It is important to me to convey joie de vivre with my art and to make the viewer smile," she says. Correct forms or perspectives move into the background; colour, humour and irony into the focus. Her most important work? Putsch of the Pony, in which she deals with a riding accident from her childhood. This and many other works can be admired on her Instagram account @leilalallali.