NADJA KIRSCHGARTEN
(b. 1979, Zürich – lives in Basel, Switzerland)

Nadja Kirschgarten was born in Zürich, 1979, and currently lives and works in Basel, Switzerland. She studied Fine Arts and Design at the Bern University of the Arts and has received several distinctions, including the IBK (Internationale Bodenseekonferenz) Prize for Art and Culture (2018) and the Cantonal Grant of Schaffhausen (2019). In 2024, she was awarded the ERNTE Art Prize of the Mobiliar for her large-scale painting “Melody”, recognised for its distinctive visual language and confident balance between figuration and abstraction. Her paintings are in institutional and private collections sjuch as Kunstsammlung Mobiliar, Kunstsammlung Hoffmann La Roche, Kunstsammlung des Museum Allerheiligen und des Kanton Schaffhausens.

Nadja’s work explores the interplay between harmony and disturbance, the real and the imagined: her paintings often unite female figures and hybrid creatures in symbolically charged, dreamlike constellations. Working primarily in oil on canvas, she combines a restrained yet luminous palette with a subtle tension between flatness and depth. Her compositions appear serene at first glance, yet gradually unfold a psychological complexity and an undercurrent of unease. In 2023 she spent six months in Cairo an Art Residency led by SKK and the City of Schaffhausen. This residency and another short stay in New York have deeply influenced her latest works. Recently, she also has returned to working with watercolour and has begun exploring sculptural forms, expanding her practice into new dimensions of material expression.

Drawing on the legacy of classical modernism while expanding it through a distinctly female perspective, Kirschgarten questions notions of identity, embodiment, and the mythic. Her works are held in private and public collections. As President of the Vebikus Kunsthalle Schaffhausen, she is dedicated to fostering dialogue between art, society, and identity — themes that resonate throughout her own artistic practice.