Goldsmith Laureate by Vera Siemund

Artist list

Vera Siemund

With her art jewelry, Vera Siemund impressively revives the architecture of past periods, and thus can be counted among the most fascinating goldsmith artists of the present. In the summer of 2013, as the fifth Hanau Goldsmith Laureate, she was a guest at the Staatliche Zeichenakademie in Hanau, where she was active artistically and gave a workshop for the students. From January 30th until May 4th, 2014, this artist from Hamburg will display around fifty of her works created between 1999 and 2013 in the Gold Hall of the Goldschmiedehaus Hanau. They stem from Vera Siemund’s analysis of “Architecture and Ornament” and her enthusiasm for the extravagant richness of form in the Historical Revival Periods. During her sojourn at the Zeichenakademie, she was inspired by such buildings as the Berlin Cathedral and the architecture of theaters and opera houses, including the baroque Comoedienhaus Wilhelmsbad.

The artist skillfully helped herself to individual elements, which she transmuted and placed into a new context. “I like the thought of readopting of themes that are in themselves a quote from earlier periods. The boundaries between my model and the original to which it refers are blurred in quoting it once again,” says Vera Siemund. She prefers to work in copper and steel, a material popular in the 19th Century.

Born in Essen in 1971, Vera Siemund received her training at the Staatliche Zeichenakademie in Hanau from 1991 to 1995, followed by studies at the renowned College of Art and Design at Halle under Professor Dorothea Prühl. Siemund opened her own studio in Hamburg in 2003. Following a four-year residence in The Hague, she returned to Hamburg in 2011.

Important galleries in Europe and the USA have devoted one-man-shows to Vera Siemund, and the artist has taken part in group exhibitions all over the world. Her works are included in notable public collections including that of the Museum of Art and Industry in Hamburg, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Danner-Foundation in Munich, among others. The artist has received many awards. In 2002, she won the first prize in the competition Nature and Time by the Society for Goldsmiths’ Art and the German Goldsmiths’ House. In the same year, she was awarded the second prize in the Youth Promotion Competition for Jewelry, Hollow- and Flatware organized by the Society for Goldsmiths’ Art in co-operation with the Bertha Heraeus and Kathinka Platzhoff Foundation.

Every two years since 2004, the City of Hanau has appointed a Goldsmith Laureate who is the guest in the Brothers-Grimm-city for six weeks. The Society for Goldsmiths’ Art makes the invitation, the Staatliche Zeichenakademie provides the workspace, and the Goldsmiths’ House presents the works produced in Hanau in an exhibition.