About

Photo: Andrea Rossetti
Kerstin Brätsch (b. Hamburg, Germany) lives and works between New York and Berlin. Brätsch received an MFA from Columbia University in New York in 2007 and an MFA at Universität der Künste in Berlin in 2008. Brätsch has been the subject of several solo exhibitions at the Casa São Roque in Porto, Portugal (2025); Kunstmuseum Bonn (2025); Munch Museum, Oslo (2025); Fondazione Memmo, Rome (2018) including KAYA, and the Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2017). Brätsch has also participated in group exhibitions at the The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2025, 2023, 2014); Camden Arts Center, London (2020); and was shown at the Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York as KAYA (2017). The artist has had work commissioned by several institutions, including Gropius Bau, Berlin (2024); Fridericianum, Kassel, Germany (2023); LUMA Foundation, Café du Parc, Arles, France (2021); and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2019). Brätsch’s permanent children’s space, BAUBAU, at the Gropius Bau opened in 2024 and will be an ongoing project over the next several years with plans to expand into an outdoor area. In 2024, Brätsch’s sculpture “Fossil Psychic Stone Mimicry (Palladiana, Mosaico_Bench I)” was commissioned by the New York High Line. For its summer 2026 rooftop commission, the Aspen Art Museum has invited Brätsch to produce a new series of four mosaic benches, which will be on view until March 2027. Brätsch is one of 18 artists commissioned to create a mosaic floor medallion at John F. Kennedy International Airport's new Terminal 6, set to open in 2026 in Queens, New York. Brätsch has been the recipient of many awards, including the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York (2022); the Guenther Peill Prize from the Guenther Peill Foundation, Germany (2020); the Helen Frankenthaler Award for Painting from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York (2020); the Edvard Munch Award, Oslo, Norway (2017); and the August Macke Prize, Germany (2014). Since 2010, Brätsch has also worked collectively under the moniker, KAYA, with artist Debo Eilers. As of 2024, Brätsch holds a professorship for Painting at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg, Germany.
Exhibitions
Publications
Select Press
Move Over, La Guardia and Newark: 18 Artists to Star at New J.F.K. Terminal
The New York Times ↗Hilarie M. Sheets
July 16, 2024
Download PDF ↓German Artist Kerstin Brätsch Is Redefining What It Means to Be a Painter Today
ARTnews ↗Phyllis Tuchman
August 25, 2022
Download PDF ↓Kerstin Bräsch “_ Ruine / Kaya_KOVO” at Fondazione Memmo, Roma
Mousse Magazine
Bianca Stoppani
July 19, 2018
Download PDF ↓Kerstin Brätsch Wins 2017 Edvard Munch Art Award
ARTnews ↗Alex Greenberger
November 14, 2017
Download PDF ↓Video






























