Raffael Bader
Artist Profile
Raffael Bader (b. 1987, Germany). Lives and works in Leipzig, Germany.
Raffael Bader is a painter who makes semi-abstract landscapes in oil. Forests, canyons, cliffs, hills, fog and fire appear in his canvases, built from layers of colour that move between recognisable places and open fields of brushwork.
Bader begins with drawings made while walking and travelling, filling notebooks with landscapes, plants and other details. In the studio he develops these into paintings in oil paint, water-soluble media and oil sticks. He alternates thin, transparent layers with dense, quick brushstrokes, and his palette ranges from pale pastel tones to strong contrasts. The canvases range from under a metre to diptychs more than three metres wide, such as Watching Clouds Passing By (2025). Fire recurs as a subject, notably in the series In the End the Bush Burns Down. He also works in charcoal and ink: On Two Islands (2021) collects 33 ink drawings made after a journey to two Aegean islands. His most recent paintings begin to introduce figures and inhabitants into the landscape.
Bader studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts (HGB), Leipzig, under Ingo Meller, and received his diploma in 2019. He received the DENKZEIT grant from the Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony in 2020 and a work scholarship from Stiftung Kunstfonds, Bonn, in 2021. His first solo exhibition in Japan, Walk in Sizzling Air, was held at the Contemporary Art Foundation, Tokyo, in 2023. Since then he has had solo exhibitions at Enari Gallery, Amsterdam (2024 and 2026), Yiri Arts, Taipei (2025), Fred Levine, Bruton (2025) and Gallery Hayashi + Art Bridge, Tokyo (2026). He is represented by ASPN, Leipzig.
His work is held in the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden and in the collection of Yusaku Maezawa, Contemporary Art Foundation, Tokyo.
Selected Exhibitions & CV
Education
Diploma, Painting, Academy of Fine Arts (HGB), Leipzig, Germany (2019)
Awards
Work scholarship, Stiftung Kunstfonds, Bonn, Germany (2021)
DENKZEIT grant, Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony, Germany (2020)
Selected Solo Exhibitions
Places of Wild Things, Enari Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2026)
Soft Embers of Becoming, Gallery Hayashi + Art Bridge, Tokyo, Japan (2026)
Feral Within, Fred Levine, Bruton (2025)
Traverse Heights Right to the Edges, Yiri Arts, Taipei, Taiwan (2025)
Luminous Floating, Enari Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2024)
Enigmatic Stream, Galerie Philipp Anders, Leipzig, Germany (2024)
T-10 Project, Alzueta Gallery, Barcelona, Spain (2024)
Walk in Sizzling Air, Contemporary Art Foundation, Tokyo, Japan (2023)
Roam Inaccessible Paths, Brushes with Greatness, London (2022)
Stormy Skies, Rocket Science, Brooklyn, New York, USA (2021)
Two-Person Exhibitions
Internal Encounters, with Thomas Mau, Enari Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2023)
Durchstreifen und verweilen, with Thomas Geyer, Galerie Brennwald, Kiel, Germany (2023)
Selected Group Exhibitions
WIN/WIN, Museum Gunzenhauser, Chemnitz, Germany (2025)
Rainbow, Yiri Arts, Taipei, Taiwan (2025)
Landscape of Time and Memory, Fred Levine, Bruton (2025)
The Landscape, Reimagined, BEERS LONDON at Saatchi Gallery, London (2024)
Upland, Rhodes, London (2024)
Abstracta, Annarumma Gallery, Naples, Italy (2023)
Silky Lights, ZFK, Leipzig, Germany (2022)
Im Flutlicht, Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig, Germany (2021)
Art Fairs
West Bund Art & Design, Yiri Arts, Shanghai, China (2025)
Art Taipei, Yiri Arts, Taipei, Taiwan (2023, 2025)
Art Rotterdam, Enari Gallery, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2024, 2025)
PAN Amsterdam, Enari Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2024)
Art Athina, Enari Gallery, Athens, Greece (2023, 2024)
Art Paris, Enari Gallery, Paris, France (2023)
London Art Fair, Candida Stevens Gallery, London (2023)
Residencies
Colstoun Arts, East Lothian, Scotland (2024)
Selected Collections
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Germany
Yusaku Maezawa, Contemporary Art Foundation, Tokyo, Japan