Maria Brunner has for decades built a painting practice that combines precision, stillness, and formal observation. She studied at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna (1980-1985).

Her works often focus on singular motifs: objects, flowers (e.g., amaryllis), draped fabrics, floating forms, faces peering out etc. Her surfaces are rich but not maximalist; she works in oil, often at considerable scale, deploying light, shadow, subtle texture, and color to give objects a presence that’s almost uncanny. She is interested in what it means for something to appear, to be looked at, to flicker between an exactitude and something more elusive.

Her recent works in the exhibition Acqua Felice at Capitain Petzel show she continues to modulate texture, light, and scale, and to explore how an image demands viewer intimacy—either closeness or lingering observation.