Christian Horras

: My work is expressive and figurative. My drawings and paintings arise from autobiographical experiences, particularly from the tension between my religious upbringing and my queer self-identity.

Drawing and painting are closely intertwined in my artistic practice; line and colour often remain autonomous, even when they work together to create a pictorial space. I work with both dry media such as pencil, charcoal and chalk, as well as liquid paints such as watercolour, oil and acrylic, and I also enjoy using mixed media. I see myself as a draughting painter or a painting draughtsman.

The human figure is my central theme: the body as the vessel of existential experience. As a gay artist who grew up in a deeply religious, homophobic and body-hostile environment, I learnt at an early age how our identity is shaped by our physicality – particularly gender, sex and appearance. For this reason, bodies hold great social and political significance for me. Everything takes place within the body – our thoughts, feelings and actions. That is why I paint the body – I paint beautiful and ugly bodies, robust and vulnerable bodies, dying and loving bodies, bodies eating and resting, and often my own body too.

The bodies I paint or draw usually come together of their own accord to form narrative scenes. Their interactions are influenced by my autobiographical experience, my engagement with art history, my perspective on today’s society, and psychological and philosophical questions. Night-time dreams or daytime fantasies, perhaps inspired by literature, the imagination or current events, also find expression in my artistic work. And then there is the painting process itself, which intervenes: it alters, distorts, liquefies – it counters my sometimes overly conscious planning of the image with a spontaneous, unforeseen emergence: this creates ambiguity, which I welcome: Bodies merge, boundaries dissolve; the interactions within and with the image appear both healing and threatening. This ambivalence is central to my work because it comes closer to the reality of human relationships and experience than any clear-cut utopia or unambiguous visual form.

2022–2025 Further training in painting under Prof. Siegfried Anzinger at the Kolbermoor Academy of Fine Arts

2009 – 2011 Postgraduate course in ‘Visual Arts and Therapy’ at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, under Prof. Dr Schottenloher

2002–2007 Studied painting and graphic art at the Academy of Fine Arts, Karlsruhe, under Prof. Ernst Caramelle

After studying painting and subsequently art therapy, Christian spent the last 12 years working as an art therapist, a career that led him to a managerial position at a psychosomatic clinic. In 2022, Christian decided to focus more on painting again. For this reason, he resigned from his management post and last year began studying painting once again under Siegfried Anzinger at the Kolbermoor Academy. He has his own studio in Bad Kissingen.

He is a member of the Professional Association of Visual Artists and the artists’ group Art97688

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Exhibitions:

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2026: Group exhibition “OMG – a divine confrontation”, BBK Gallery at the Kulturspeicher, Würzburg

. 2026: Group exhibition “Neuaufnahmen”, BBK Gallery at the Kulturspeicher, Würzburg

2025: Group exhibition “Bad Kissingen ist bunt”, Museum Obere Saline, Bad Kissingen

2024 Group exhibition “The male figure”, Kunstbehandlung Gallery

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Munich

2024 Group exhibition “en detail”, Kunstbehandlung Gallery, Munich

2024 Artist in residence, Kunstfabrik Schweinfurt

2024 Group exhibition “Forgotten”, BBK Gallery

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Würzburg

2024 Group exhibition “Drawing Today”, BBK Gallery, Würzburg

2007 Group exhibition “Young Artists at Villa Böhm”, Kunstverein Neustadt