Susanna Bauer

• A monograph of works by German-born artist Susanna Bauer

This monograph on Susanna Bauer presents the artist’s work to an international audience for the first time in book form. The essential ingredients of Bauer’s artistic production are the ephemeral natural elements that she encounters during walks and hikes in Cornwall, UK, where she lives and works. They are leaves, stones, twigs... elements that become the heart of more elaborate creations rendered with crochet - sometimes used conventionally as a decoration, other times as a sculptural means of communication. Bauer’s leaves are airy sculptures in which the artist pursues a balance between strength and fragility. Nature becomes a metaphor for humanity: the artfully interwoven threads remind us that we are all part of a vaster network and therefore generators of connections. But it also stands for life: viewing these works it is impossible not to reflect on the confluences of beauty and vulnerability, resistance and transformation.

The theme of the relationship between art and nature, and the ensuing interconnections, are investigated both through Bauer’s original work and in an introductory essay that analyzes her oeuvre within the broader context of the history of art.

Susanna Bauer is a visual artist. She studied landscape architecture at the Technical University of Munich. For 17 years, she worked as a modelmaker for advertising, film and artists. She later continued her studies at the Camberwell College of Art, London. Though she learned the art of crocheting as a child in Germany, it was in England that she glimpsed the potential of combining this skill with her love of nature. When she met her partner, the artist Paul Fry, she began to discover the territory of Cornwall, which kindled her memories of a childhood spent close to nature. After many years traveling between Cornwall and London and following the birth of her son, she chose to permanently relocate to the former. Her work has appeared in many newspapers, including the Guardian, the Observer, and Politiken; and articles have been written about her in such high-profile magazines as Flow International, American Craft, Sculpture, and Io Donna. Valentina De Pasca is a historian of ancient art. She obtained a PhD in art history and medieval archaeology from Milan University with a thesis titled ’Intercultural Exchanges and Interactions with the Eastern Mediterranean Area in Lombard Art in Italy (16th-17th Century): the Case of the Disk Fibulae, ’ which she defended in 2018. She also specializes in late antiquity and early medieval art, and compiled a study on the influence of Eastern Mediterranean style on the valuable artifacts unearthed in the Central Italian necropolis of Castel Trosino and Nocera Umbra. After a period of teaching at university and working with the Archive for Metaphysical Art in Milan, in the spring of 2018 she joined 5 Continents Editions, where she is in charge of sales, marketing, and communication. In 2019 her first illustrated children’s book, Pomodori da scartare, was published by Edizioni Gruppo Abele.