Born of Dust and Wind
Raised amid the open, whispering expanses of Namibia, Antoinette von Saurma developed an acute awareness of the subtle signals that shape the natural world. From an early age, the distant pulse of drumbeats on moonless nights and the stark silence of semi-desert landscapes formed the backdrop to her internal world. This early connection to nature and its quiet resilience would later become the foundation of her artistic voice. Rather than merely depict nature, von Saurma seeks to express its overlooked cadences—its quiet destruction, its understated rebirth, and its persistent strength to heal itself.
Von Saurma’s visual language reflects this profound sensitivity. Her drawings, frequently rendered in pen and ink on the most delicate papers, operate as meditative attempts to impose clarity on an otherwise chaotic or quietly deteriorating world. Her choice of fragile materials mirrors the themes she explores: fragility, endurance, and transformation. Her work avoids human presence in favor of revealing a raw, uninhabited beauty that is not only aesthetic but also restorative. This act of drawing becomes for her an interface between the known and the uncertain, a means of navigating what is visible and what lies just beyond comprehension.
While nature remains her enduring muse, von Saurma’s practice is marked by a restless curiosity. She alternates between media—graphite, collage, monotype, woodcut, linocut, and even immersive wall drawings—inviting each medium to reshape her approach. Her creative process does not rest in comfort zones; it thrives in movement and reinvention. Whether working with traditional materials or adapting to unexpected constraints, such as using newspapers during pandemic-related shortages, her commitment remains the same: to maintain the freshness of her own perception and challenge her viewers to see differently.
Antoinette von Saurma: The Irresistible Pull of Creation
The trajectory of von Saurma’s life has never been separate from creativity. There was never a conscious decision to “become an artist”; rather, artistic expression was an instinctive, lifelong necessity. Growing up on a remote farm, far from urban influences, she learned to build her own toys, sew her own dolls’ clothes, and participate in every stage of life’s material processes, from grinding coffee to cultivating vegetables. These early acts of making were not whimsical but deeply formative. They laid the groundwork for a practice rooted in care, repetition, trial, and patience—the same qualities required in her studio today.
Her formal training began in Africa at the Johannesburg School of Art during a time when personal expression was circumscribed by a political system struggling against the grip of apartheid. Despite this, the school provided her with a rigorous technical foundation and a disciplined approach to drawing. Years later, after raising four children, she sought renewal and a fresh lens on her practice by enrolling in the Academy of Arts in Munich. The transition was not seamless. She encountered a system that at first attempted to confine her to rigid expectations, but she eventually found creative liberation under the mentorship of Jorinde Voigt. In 2016, she earned her Master of Arts and quickly began receiving opportunities to exhibit internationally.
Since then, von Saurma’s work has appeared in galleries across Europe, the United States, China, Moscow, and Africa. Each exhibition becomes a continuation of her long-standing exploration: how to give visual form to the forces that shape and reshape our world. Her evolution as an artist has not been linear but cyclical, returning again and again to the root impulse of creation, whether it be as a child stitching uneven seams or as a master draughtswoman mapping fragile ecosystems onto paper and wall.
Nature Without Witness
Von Saurma’s subject matter often revolves around scenes stripped of human activity, offering instead the stark contours of nature’s quiet endurance. She is not drawn to picturesque landscapes or idealized pastoral views. Rather, she searches for places and conditions where nature speaks in silence—where absence becomes its own kind of presence. In these works, the viewer is invited to reflect on the vulnerability and power of ecosystems left to recover without interference. Her focus is not on drama but on slow-moving forces, the subtle erosion or regrowth that escapes the notice of most observers.
To access this delicate balance between chaos and structure, von Saurma must navigate a studio environment that alternates between solitude and social exchange. She frequently travels, exposing herself to different visual vocabularies and lived experiences that later inform her pieces. Yet, for all her movement, she maintains an internal focus, often prompted by current events or distressing images that demand a response. Art becomes the vessel through which she metabolizes grief or confusion, transforming them into something quieter, contemplative, and occasionally even hopeful. Her drawings are acts of witnessing, offering a space where pain and recovery can exist in tandem.
While working alone is essential for deep focus, von Saurma values conversation and critique. Exchanges with others—whether about her own process or theirs—introduce necessary friction and insight. Distractions, especially those related to parenting, are not dismissed but absorbed as part of her working rhythm. Rather than resist the interruptions of life, she finds ways to let them inform her work. In this sense, her studio is not a sealed-off sanctuary but a porous space that responds to the world while trying to shape a more coherent vision of it.
Antoinette von Saurma: Drawing Beyond Boundaries
Among von Saurma’s most compelling artistic aspirations is her desire to expand her drawing practice beyond paper and canvas, quite literally onto walls and into spaces. She describes a particularly memorable experience at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, where she was granted permission to extend a drawing through the museum’s entrance passage. That immersive gesture, erasing conventional boundaries and engaging the viewer physically as well as visually, marked a significant milestone in her career. It opened up new possibilities for how drawing could function not just as image but as spatial intervention.
Her dream project pushes this idea further. She imagines an entire room enveloped in drawn lines, where surfaces blur into one another and space itself becomes part of the composition. Into this environment, she would suspend delicate drawings on Japanese paper—so thin and responsive that they would tremble with every movement of air. These floating pieces would resist static display, instead becoming living components of the installation, reacting to the architecture and the audience alike. Such a project would unite several of her core themes: fragility, impermanence, and the intimate conversation between nature and human perception.
What sets von Saurma apart is her commitment to continually redefining the limits of her medium. Whether confronting a blank wall, a brittle newspaper page, or a fragile sheet of rice paper, she approaches each surface as a chance to chart new territory. Her vision is not content with repetition or formula; it strives for discovery. Through this, she invites others to look again at the seemingly familiar and to find, within it, a new way of seeing.
