Original Artwork: Picking Petals, making Mixtapes in a Renaissance Wormhole. – Anni Heuchel

29.74 x 21 cm
Oil on Wood

The subject of the painting comes from a work by Robert Campin, which I discovered on a vacation in Madrid at the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza and was painted in 1425. I was fascinated by the beauty and simultaneous sadness of the sitter. In the original, the gentleman is reduced to his obesity by the title (“Portrait of a Fat Man”), which instinctively made me angry. I wanted to make the face my own and lend purpose to his apparent pain. The sadness hidden in his gaze seemed timeless to me and I thought it could only be caused by heartbreak. To emphasize this, I depicted him as a shapeless mass of flesh that is absorbed in lovesickness. A plant that loses its petals - as in the game “She loves me, she loves me not” - and a mixtape that he may have made for the person he loves are symbols of this grief.

About the artist:

Anni Heuchel, born in 1990 in East Germany, is a self-taught artist who believes that the essence of a great body of work lies more in its content than in its technique.

She observes that modern art often prioritizes vanity and superficial elements, such as neon tubes, to craft pieces that are deemed spirited and valuable—an approach she actively avoids.

Anni pursued studies in philosophy, sociology, art history, and cultural anthropology in Potsdam and Berlin. Currently, her artistic exploration centers on questions of human identity, often expressed through portraits. She also finds inspiration in surrealistic, densely layered, and vibrant settings. Her interests include punk rock as a mindset, sexual identity, feminism, and morality, which frequently inform her work.