MARIELUISE BANTEL | The Beauty of Decay

MARIELUISE BANTEL | The Beauty of Decay

“I look with an attentive eye at the things of the visible world and with sensitive tracing at the things which often remain hidden from sight. I sympathize with the smallest, most delightful things in life, to which flowers belong. Plants serve as a metaphor for beauty and individuality. They inspire metaphysical reflections, also about us humans. They enliven our senses, delight us and accompany us through all of our lives, in which everything has its time: blossoming, prospering, and fading.”
– Marieluise Bantel

Marieluise Bantel is an artist from Germany who specializes in painting flowers. She prefers to devote herself to this artistic subject due to her closeness to nature, which can be traced back to her youth in a rural environment and early stays in the countryside in England. She lives in Metzingen, a small town surrounded by vineyards and meadows – an ideal environment for a flower artist.
With her flower paintings, Marieluise Bantel does not only want to depict and reproduce, but to express a more profound reality and statement behind what is depicted.
She studied art at the “Freie Kunstschule Stuttgart – Akademie für Kunst und Design” and graduated with a diploma. She has already received awards for her artistic works, including the 1st place award at the Ash Wednesday Art Prize in Stuttgart, and was awarded in the US by the art magazine International Artist. In Germany, she has already had exhibitions in palaces and castles, including at the Residential Palace Ludwigsburg. In October 2021, she was represented at the Florence Biennale, Italy, and in November at art3f in Brussels, Belgium.
In August 2022, she exhibited at the Swiss Art Expo, Switzerland, as part of an award by a gallery project.

“Age and decay are unique and flawless in their individuality, as is youth which is gaining experience. Capturing this is the quintessence to be distilled from this art project.” -Marieluise Bantel

The Beauty of Decay

The individual loses its perceived value in a world of standardized mass products. Only an attentive look at individual characteristics allows us to recognize the essence and uniqueness of life.
Plants serve as a metaphor for beauty and individuality, which break out of the norm in rebellion with the inescapable power of transience.
The project “The Beauty of Decay” shows flowers in the process of withering, in which they once again reveal themselves in their splendor and at the same time in their fragility – each plant is thereby differently shaped and formed by the influences of the world and thus shows itself in its unique beauty.
In this series of paintings, no background was painted on the canvas. This makes the painting technically very demanding but, at the same time, allows full concentration on a theme that is so often avoided: decay.

The hints of shadow in the paintings create a spatial effect that raises the subject to an imaginary pedestal.
The artworks are still lifes and combine three typical aspects of this genre: figurative painting, flower painting, and the reference to transience. But while most classical flowers still lifes show whole bouquets,
Marieluise Bantel concentrates on individual flowers. This gives her and her works the opportunity to relate the vanitas motif, which points to the transience of life, directly to the individual.
At the same time, her series of paintings expand the admonishing still-life concept to include the element of beauty.
For it is precisely in decay that life’s fragile and noble grace and individuality are revealed. And, of course, life and its perfect beauty can only be fully and completely understood when it is also viewed from the perspective of decay.
Marieluise Bantel’s art offers this preciousness to its viewers in an impressive way with her project “The Beauty of Decay.”