Angie (Angelika) Schmassmann-Zerlauth
Angie (Angelika) Schmassmann-Zerlauth is a Swiss artist with Austrian roots. Born 1963 in Basel, Switzerland with an Austrian father and a Swiss, French speaking, mother. Raised in Vienna/Baden and Reutte, Austria and back in Basel, Switzerland. After a commercial education, she was working for several years for different trading companies. Her intercultural family background and her passion for travelling, her interest in other cultures were and are inspiring Angelika her whole life and are reflected in her artwork. She is married and has two grown up children.
During her motherhood, she found her passion as an artist and painter. She was trained in classical watercolor painting (by Denise Schwander), doing many still-life artworks in her early career. Later on Angelika got her inspiration from the great Paul Klee, spending many hours in the “Zentrum Paul Klee” Bern, Switzerland, close by where she was living back then. She was excited about his work in constructivism and primitivism, finding inspiration for her own way and style into abstract expressionism, which she is following consequently since then.
Playing with different materials and combining those with oil, acryl colors to powerful, vibrating artworks, letting the colors and objects speak for themselves. Angelika’s work is based on a selection of colors she is using only. Over a certain period, one color or color-combination is dominating her artistry work inspired by the current environment or living circumstances, generating a line of pictures they can stand together or be exhibited separately.
Since 2006, she is working mostly in her artist atelier in Erlinsbach, Switzerland. In the years 2014 – 2020, she followed her husband to the United States where she was creating different impressive artefacts – the “Golden Brown Line” – based and inspired from her living environment in Western New York.