Susan M. Canning, in: Tales of Wonder and Woe, exhibition catalogue, Castle Gallery, New Rochelle, NY, USA, December 2008
Bettina Sellmann’s paintings Snow White and The Clearing Snow White with her “skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair black as the wood on the window frame,” presents women with a typography of beauty defined by contemplation and purity. The narrative of this tale revolves around a conflict in the […]
Corinna Ripps Schaming, in: Flicker, exhibition brochure, University Art Museum, Albany, NY, 2006
Bettina Sellmann’s paintings evoke the conventions of Old Master portraits, conveying a sense of both mourning and desire articulated through familiar painterly conceits. Using multi-layered, translucent pigments in pale pinks, powder blues, and Day-Glo yellows and greens, Sellmann renders delicate watercolors on canvas in which solidity and form immediately break into fluid distortions. By peeling […]
Ann Wilson Lloyd, in: Figuratively Seeing, exhibition catalogue, Massachusetts College of Art and Design, 2009
Inspired by art historical imagery, Bettina Sellmann creates what she calls “see-through versions” of Old Master paintings. Using watercolor, Sellmann soaks the canvas with pigments to build up veil-like matte layers, punctuated with a few deftly drawn lines. Her minimalist approach belies a Baroque influence, in the drenched and deep colors that accent her sinuous […]
Bettina Sellmann: Pressetext US PAINTINGS, in: Trendkraft, Online-Magazin, 18. April, 2015
Andrew Goldstein, in: New York Magazine online Art Candy, July 22, 2008
Kris Wilton, in: artinfo, online magazine, December 18, 2008
Cassandra Neyenesch, in: The Brooklyn Rail, December 2008
Bettina Sellmann, in: Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, USA
Andreas Schlaegel on Bettina Sellmann’s Paintings, in: Bettina Sellmann: Magic Every Day, exhibition catalogue, Gilla Lörcher | Contemporary Art, Berlin, 2013
It’s already there! If you wanted to explain painting, language is surely not the right means to do so. It’s much too concrete, arduous, time-based and cumbersome. A flirt could come closest, a coquettish and elusive approximation. This is the quality one can find in the personages of Bettina Sellmann’s paintings, as well as […]
René Luckhardt, in: Austellungskatalog Farbauftrag, Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, 2018
(scroll down for English version) „Untitled“ stammt aus der Serie „Spiral, Square and Dickie Bow“, einer Reihe gleich großer Querformate aus dem Jahr 2015. Sie alle wiederholen die Darstellung eines Kawaii*-artig reduzierten Doppelportraits, das Bettina Sellmann malerisch variiert. Kawaii stammt aus dem Japanischen und bedeutet soviel wie süß, niedlich oder attraktiv. Das wesentliche Merkmal dieser […]
