Bruno Raetsch, born in Neuss in 1962 and rai­sed in Potsdam, is a pro­fes­sor of sculpture/figure at Burg Giebichenstein, the Art University in Halle (Saale), and head of the class of the same name. He repres­ents an art move­ment that con­fi­dent­ly aban­dons the tra­di­tio­nal con­cept of sculp­tu­re, in which a craft­sman “car­ves an image out of stone or wood” Bruno Raetsch is com­ple­te­ly inde­pen­dent artis­ti­cal­ly, free from con­ven­ti­ons and capa­ble of giving pla­s­tic form to moods, fee­lings, thoughts and memo­ries – in three-dimen­sio­nal dra­wings of pos­si­bly real and ima­gi­nable soul­scapes, sur­rea­li­stic and often soci­al­ly cri­ti­cal woo­den sculp­tures, through expan­si­ve three-dimen­sio­nal instal­la­ti­ons and through sculp­tures made of clay, con­cre­te and other mate­ri­als, from which he also casts bron­ze sculp­tures. “There is an incre­di­bly con­cen­tra­ted raw ener­gy in his pain­tings and sculp­tures – like oak trees in a head­wind,” wri­tes London-based Swiss artist Hans Stofe about Bruno Raetsch’s art: “This ener­gy spreads across the sur­faces to the edges of the objects or images, whe­re it soli­di­fies into encrus­ted, dark, shadow-like figu­res. The pain­tings beco­me sculp­tu­ral, the sculp­tures beco­me pain­ter­ly” – and the art seems ali­ve.