BIOGRAPHY

Marianna Tyralla (born in 1988 in Sebnitz) grew up in the Bohemian/Saxon Switzerland region on the German-Czech border. For Tyralla, boundaries are fluid and permeable. Having trained as a master painter and varnisher, she deepened her knowledge of the limits of language and the presence of one’s own body in space by studying German language and literature, and drama, respectively. Her exposure to building cultures and church painting gave her an eye for the interplay of architecture, materials and colour. Her art draws on this experiential knowledge without seeing it as a fixed system. Her works transcend the divisions created by labels and established boundaries, exploring a space of presence. She studied painting under Norbert Bisky and sculpture under Thomas Rentmeister at Braunschweig University of Art.

Source: RAL 3020 Noise, Hannover Re Foundation, Hanover, 2026, p. 52. Original text in German. English translation: Subtext Berlin.

CV

Born 1988 in Sebnitz, Germany
Lives and works in Braunschweig, Germany

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2026

Nothing is ever really lost
Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany
Curated by Monja Remmers

Under the Weeping Birch
Studios of Birte Bosse and Thomas Rentmeister, Dreetz, Germany

Über Worte hinaus– Meisterschüler:innen 2026
Hannover Re, Hanover, Germany
Curated by Karin Kamolz; co-curated by Uwe Sommer

2025

STIMMMMMMMUNG
Diploma Exhibition, halle267 – Städtische Galerie Braunschweig, Germany
Curated by Övül Ö. Durmuşoğlu

2023

still
Solo presentation, Library, Braunschweig University of Art (HBK), Braunschweig, Germany
Artist-initiated

2022

Malfunctioning Storage
Prima Kunst Container, Stadtgalerie Kiel, Kiel, Germany

2021

kon.:takt
Make-up, Berlin, Germany

2020

Utopische Orte: Utopische Lichter
Allgemeiner Konsumverein, Braunschweig, Germany

2018

INTERIORA PATENT
Rittergut Lucklum, Erkerode, Germany

Polarität und Steigerung zweier Orte
Solo installation, Skatepark Westbahnhof and grounds of Kunstverein Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany
Artist-initiated

EDUCATION

2025–2026

Meisterschülerin, Prof. Thomas Rentmeister
Braunschweig University of Art (HBK), Germany

2025

Diploma in Fine Arts with distinction
Braunschweig University of Art (HBK), Germany

2018–2025

Fine Arts, Sculpture
Prof. Thomas Rentmeister
Braunschweig University of Art (HBK), Germany

2019–2024

Additional studies in German Language and Literature and Drama
Braunschweig University of Art and Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany

2017–2018

Fine Arts, Painting
Prof. Norbert Bisky
Braunschweig University of Art (HBK), Germany

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

2026

RAL 3020 Noise
Marianna Tyralla
Monographic artist catalogue
Hannover Re Foundation, Hanover, Germany
Texts: Marianna Tyralla, Dr. Marina Linares
English translation: Subtext Berlin
ISBN 978-3-9829217-2-3

2025

WHISPERS BETWEEN 2018–2025
Artist monograph
Published by Marianna Tyralla, Braunschweig, Germany

2022

kon.:takt
Exhibition catalogue, class of Prof. Thomas Rentmeister
Braunschweig University of Art, Germany
Edited by Anna Mosemann

GRANTS & FUNDING

2026

Individual publication funding, Hannover Re Foundation, Hanover, Germany
RAL 3020 Noise, monographic artist catalogue

BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAIT

The sea was absent from the landscape of Marianna Tyralla’s childhood, but rarely from its stories. She grew up near the German–Czech border, at the edge of Bohemia, in a family whose history was shaped by transport, hospitality and the people who came and went. The family’s transport business stretched from horse-drawn haulage in her great-grandfather’s day to the lorries of her grandfather’s. Workers, students and travellers stayed at the family guesthouse, sometimes becoming part of the family themselves. Her father had served in the navy, and an uncle worked at sea. Seafaring was part of the family’s own history, though not every absence was a journey. Amid the constant coming and going, paintings by her great-grandfather, himself an artist, remained on the walls. Literature and poetry offered other ways of travelling. In Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, landlocked Bohemia is given a coastline. Ingeborg Bachmann returned to that impossible shore in her poem Bohemia Lies by the Sea.

Outside the house, her grandfather had arranged boulders from a quarry across the grounds, where they appeared almost as if left behind by a glacier. As a child, Tyralla covered them with mud, built towers from guesthouse chairs and shelters from empty drinks crates, and experimented with timber gathered from the family woodland. Objects could be moved, accumulated, dismantled and assembled again. Their surfaces changed with use and exposure to the weather. Yet it was the city, rather than the surrounding forests, that increasingly drew her attention. Fascinated by buildings and their material histories, she trained as a painter and decorator, earned the German Meister qualification and worked in historic preservation. During her training, she spent time in France, where, as in Dresden, Baroque architecture made a lasting impression. Its rhythms, structures and elaborate forms offered ways of seeing that would remain with her, even as she moved away from their original narratives.

For years, Tyralla had pursued her own explorations in writing, painting, sculpture and music. The experience of preserving what others had made sharpened her awareness of material and time, but her growing desire was to create forms that had not existed before. She eventually chose to devote herself to art, moving beyond the canvas and the confines of predetermined narratives towards the physical possibilities of sculpture and installation. Here, materials could occupy space, bend, accumulate, resonate and change. Memories, literary encounters and observations might set a work in motion, but they need not become its subject. Through the act of making, they give way to forms with their own presence and meaning, open to interpretation and to the passage of time. What sets a work in motion does not necessarily determine where it will arrive.

Originally written in German. English translation.