GERDA BRITT-KRESSE
b. 1907, Altfelde, East Prussia, German Empire
d. 1995, Bad Pyrmont, Germany
WORKS | BIOGRAPHY | EXHIBITIONS
SELECTED WORKS
BIOGRAPHY
Gerda Britt-Kresse grew up in a village near Marienburg in East Prussia in a family of believing Christians close to nature. In Deutsch-Eylau (West Prussia) she attended a secondary school for girls and then a boarding school in Stettin where she received an education in household management.
Throughout her life she always had the feeling of being surrounded by invisible beings and being guided by an inner voice. In 1930 she married and had four children. During the war she worked in a Wehrmacht canteen. There she prophesied to the soldiers that they would return like Napoleon.
Shortly before the end of the World War II, the family escaped to Bad Pyrmont, where Gerda found a new spiritual home with the Quakers. Her husband was wounded and returned from the war unfit for work. Britt-Kresse became a doctor's receptionist until she retired at the age of 71 in 1978.
She was 64 years old when an invisible power drew her into a painting shop at Christmas 1971. Never in her life had she drawn or painted and never been interested in art. Without knowing why, she bought paints, painting blocks, brushes. First she consciously tried to paint, but the result was poor. Then she heard a voice telling her to try again. Suddenly she saw a picture of a trapped soul crying out for salvation. Gerda was horrified. She did not want to work with the world of darkness. Through prayers she broke the spell of this image. Since then painting has become compulsive for her. Often Gerda heard the voice requesting her to sit down between 12 and 13 o'clock and paint. Then, she no longer perceived the outer world, worked quickly with her bare hands and a foam sponge, filled with deep inner silence. Within an hour, she painted four to five pictures, never knowing what her hands would produce.
Britt-Kresse regarded her mediumistic paintings as her examination work. It was her task to convey messages of joy, warnings and comfort through these pictures. Later the voice told her that she was an ambassador of higher dimensions.
Britt-Kresses works are characterized by sweepingly executed obsessive repetitions of luxuriant plant motifs. Ghostly diaphanous structures sometimes emerge from the color stains applied through the finger painting technique. In a number of her works, the plant ornaments develop into geometric structures filling the entire surface in energetic, abstract, rhythmic color patterns. People report that the works have had physical or psychical healing effects on them.
EXHIBITIONS
1996 Kunststudio, Bad Pyrmont, Germany, 6/1996
1988 Galerie Breiti, Greifensee, Switzerland, 9/1988 – 10/1988
1982 Stadtsparkasse, Bad Pyrmont, Germany, 7/1982
1979 Stadtsparkasse, Bad Pyrmont, Germany, 12/1979
