Text below in Spanish

Birgitte Knaus has established a wide international reputation as a portraitist, and her work has been well received by the public at large. The timeless quality inherent in her portraits can be attributed in part to her Viennese father, who was an outstanding “realistic” painter of considerable repute and who mastered his art with sensitivity and attention to detail.

Birgitte was born in Bilbao, Spain, she went to Venezuela and then Chile with her family, where she remained for the first fifteen years of her life, until her father decided in 1963 to return to Europe to build a new life for his family. After finishing school in Spain, Birgitte received private tuition in Germany from the portraitist Werner Schramm in Düsseldorf. Portraiture soon became her guiding passion. Art connoisseurs rapidly recognized her talent and she embarked upon her professional career in 1967 using charcoal/fusain on soft corn-coloured paper as her medium.

Birgitte’s great interest in physiognomy, anatomy and psychology, as well as the technique of traditional portraitists, deepened her own experience and understanding and nurtured her own development. Her portraits demonstrate perception and sensitivity to her subject’s personality as seen through the eyes of an artist with a deep aesthetic sense.
Birgitte’s use of colour and the purity and power of her line is also due to her extraordinary talent, her dynamic and inquisitive mind, her power of perception, both of the spiritual and concrete, which lend a special radiance to her work and capture the very essence of the sitter.
This is successfully contrasted with the decorative, two-dimensional quality of the background. Delicately drawn plants, fabrics and objects - that often characterize the sitter - are subtly suggested in a manner in which only a sensitive artist can communicate, a manner that compliments the sitter without leading the eye away from the focal point of the composition.
Despite the technical finish of her work, there is nothing stilted or affected in her style. The overall impression is one of fluidity and freshness. Birgitte has successfully assimilated the influence of the masters she most admires, while at the same time creating a form of expression that is entirely her own.

She has been acclaimed and commissioned in England, Germany, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, Greece, Iran, the Philippines and, recently, extensively in the U.S.A. Her exhibitions in St. Moritz, Gstaad, Monte Carlo and, most recently, in London have received highly favourable reviews. The basis of her unusual success has been brought about by private recommendations of clients and by portrait connoisseurs.

In the midst of her success, Birgitte’s enthusiasm for her work and her creative power is continuously emerging and evolving.
(The artist wishes to express her thanks to the late Dr. P. Berry for this text.)

Birgitte Knaus is a member of a family of artists.
Her brother  Tilman Knaus is a Magic Realist painter.