Marianne Kolb

Marianne Kolb’s work focuses on the human figure in a raw and emotive style. Her approach to painting is spontaneous, mixing color directly on the canvas, pushing paint around with her hands, welcoming the accidental, and letting the image emerge as it will. With her curiosity driving her, Kolb’s paintings are a result of daily observations and a zealous interest in what it means to be alive and navigating the world. By relinquishing control and submitting to her materials and process, Kolb’s figures contain a powerful vulnerability and courage. Her paintings are nuanced, complex, and suggestive, evoking many of the same dualities as that of the human spirit itself.

Kolb was born in a small farming town in Switzerland and moved to the Berkley area in her mid-twenties, where she connected to the East Bay arts community. Largely self-taught, Kolb’s work is widely collected and her work has appeared in numerous publications.