In 'The Sprayed Dear,' Katharina Grosse's Dreamy Art Knows No Bounds

Staatsgalerie Stuttgart is getting a chromatic makeover with The Sprayed Dear, the latest solo exhibition by celebrated German artist Katharina Grosse. Based between Berlin and New Zealand, Grosse has spent over three decades redefining what painting can be, moving beyond the canvas to embrace entire landscapes, buildings and sculptural form.

For Grosse, a painting has no end nor edge. Using her signature spray technique, she sweeps pigment across surfaces in immersive dreamlike waves whose borderless forms create a harmonic unity. “For me, two-dimensional painting doesn’t exist,” the artist explained. “The canvas itself is a three-dimensional, haptic object and a painting can appear anywhere. On an egg, in the crook of your arm, in snow and ice or on the beach.”

Circling this philosophy are three new works, produced especially for the show. Among them is the titular piece, The Sprayed Dear, which references the golden stag atop the museum and plays on the word “dear” as something treasured. Also on view are Ghost, a massive white styrofoam sculpture exploring surface and shape,  and Untitled, which reveals the sculptural soul of Grosse’s canvas paintings. Complementing these works are rarely seen early sculptures from her student years at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, shedding light on a lesser-known dimension of her practice.

Alongside the exhibition, Grosse’s magnetic color fields will be the focus of this year’s Messeplatz Project at Art Basel’s marquee fair in June.

The Sprayed Dear is now on view in Stuttgart through January 2026.

Staatsgalerie Stuttgart
Konrad-Adenauer-Straße 30-32,
70173 Stuttgart, Germany