Emanuel Schulze

The contemporary paintings of the German artist Emanuel Schulze plunge the viewer into a dreamlike world in which architecture and landscape are intimately linked.

An artist who mixes technical precision and pictorial freedom

Graduate of scenography at the School of Fine Arts in Dresden, Germany, Emanuel Schulze builds his painting around two central elements: architecture and landscape.

Interested in geometric shapes, the artist uses architecture as an element that structures his artwork and bounds their spatial arrangements. These buildings allow him to organize his paintings and give a frame to the different elements that compose them. The landscape, meanwhile, allows him to introduce mystery and pictorial experimentation into his paintings. During this stage, the artist lets the paint flow freely on the canvas giving an important place to chance and randomness. This dichotomy between the rigor of the architectural elements and the freedom of the landscaped spaces is at the heart of Emanuel Schulze’s artistic production. The artist himself says “I start my paintings without exact planning and I use random processes. It’s funny as at first I have a lot of freedom, freedom which I do not have at the end of a painting as I have to finalize things with precision.”

An invitation to travel 

One of Emanuel Schulze’s principal sources of inspiration is travelling. He visited South Africa, Sweden and America, all of which influence the landscapes in his art. To give depth to his paintings, the artist does not hesitate to integrate and play with reflections in his artwork.

We can see mirror effects in his works, where the architectural and landscape elements are reflected in what appears to be aquatic surfaces. He claims that the play on reflections helps anchor architectural forms in the landscape. These dreamlike interpretations of landscapes invite the viewer to contemplate and introspect. The colors chosen by the artist, sometimes vivid, sometimes pastel, contribute to the meticulous construction of his art and constitute a full element in themselves. He says himself “in order to bring closer the architecture and the landscapes, it is necessary to work on the harmony of the colors. The color is subordinate to the painting, but it is also a central element of the atmosphere of my work.”

The enigmatic works of Emanuel Schulze have been exhibited on numerous occasions, notably in Germany. Some of them have joined collections in public institutions and many others have joined private collections. By skillfully combining architecture and landscape, Emanuel Schulze proposes unique and poetic paintings in which the multiple colored reflections contribute to create a captivating atmosphere.