Roger Scruton once said, “The great artists of the past were aware that human life is full of chaos and suffering. But they had a remedy for this. And the name of that remedy was a beauty. The beautiful work of art brings consolation in sorrow and affirmation in joy. It shows human life to be worthwhile.” Abstract Expressionism started in America as a post-world war II artistic movement. It was the primary art movement that arose from America and place New York in the middle of the art world. The term artistic movement was first applied to American art in 1946 by art critic Robert Coates. It’s most typically aforementioned that Surrealism is its precursor as a result of the utilization of spontaneous, automatic, and subconscious creations. Abstract Expressionism gets its name from the combining of emotional intensity and self-expression of German Expressionists and therefore the anti figurative aesthetics of abstract schools where Futurism, architectural style, and artificial art movement came from.
Vera Jochum is an abstract expressionist from Germany, specialized in paintings and collage making. Her artworks aim to show her feelings to the viewers. This can be something different for each individual. In her collages, she uses many found objects and also likes to hide lines of poetry or passages of song lyrics that mean something to her. She felt this constant need to express herself artistically; she felt it deeply rooted in her. However, she only started to show this publicly at the beginning of 2019 when she started to present her work on Instagram at her handle @jochumvera. Due to the great response and resulting success, she decided to work as a freelance artist. Working in her studio gives her deep satisfaction and is more important to her than being proud of anything. The situation of the pandemic has only helped her to engage more intensively with her art and to use the opportunity to share her talent on social media platforms. Her message to the other artists is, “be brave and go your own way and don’t be afraid to experiment – this is the only way to create something new”, so influential and impactful.
She tries to be influenced as little as possible. On the other hand, she is inspired by the little things. It can be a view from a moving car, a certain object that fascinates her, a color combination or technique she wants to try, or simply a scent that appeals to her. She idolizes Georges Braque who was a major 20th-century French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor. His most important contributions to the history of art were in his alliance with Fauvism from 1905, and the role he played in the development of Cubism. One of his famous sayings goes like this, “Truth exists; only falsehood has to be invented. Art is made to disturb, science reassures. Reality only reveals itself when it is illuminated by a ray of poetry.”
According to her, art from a student’s point of view is, “I am not the right person to answer this. I have never studied art. Everything I do comes from my urge to experiment and express myself. I try to be influenced as little as possible. That’s hard enough these days, and I think it’s almost impossible with a degree because professors are very influential. But of course, that doesn’t mean that I reject studying or even consider it superfluous. On the contrary, it is immensely important for grasping art theory.”