UPCOMING: MARIELUISE BANTEL. THE LIFE OF FLOWERS

Begin again, with blooms

By Linda Falcone

German Botanical artist Marieluise Bantel will be on show from February 18 to March 31 2026 at Cultural Association Il Palmerino with 'THE LIFE OF FLOWERS', with canvas and paper works, as part of the project 'A FLORENTINE GARDEN: EARLY WOMEN EXPATS AND ARTISTS OF TODAY' organised by Calliope Arts Foundation and Cultural Association Il Palmerino, in collaboration with the British Institute of Florence. The Atelier degli Artigianelli, a Florentine paper-making workshop in the Oltrarno district is another of the projects partners for the MarieLuise Bantel show.

This interview was originally published in Restoration Conversations

magazine, Issue 6, Autumn 2024

Botanical artist Marieluise Bantel in her studio

Mary Delaney’s story and her unique take on  ‘flower painting’ brought a contemporary artist to mind: MarieLuise Bantel, whose many blossoms – in paint not paper – bring new meaning to the phrase ‘flower power’. Bantel’s botanical works depict plants that, in the artist’s words, represent “a momentary standstill of time, by which one is deeply gripped.”

At aged 70, she earned her art degree at the ‘Freie Kunstschule Stuttgart - Akademie für Kunst und Design’ and now paints professionally. She has exhibited in Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, and Belgium, in such varied venues as the Residential Palace Ludwigsburg, the Swiss Art Expo, the Florence Biennale and Madrid’s Van Gogh Art Gallery. Since 2021, MarieLuise has collaborated with British haute couture fashion designer Suzannah London. Restoration Conversations was delighted to sit down to a fascinating conversation with MarieLuise to discuss art, ageing, ‘invisibility’ and having eyes to see. Hers is a language of flowers, in which blooms are people too.

"I started studying for my art degree, after a happy thirty-year career teaching future teachers. I needed something new to do, and it was finally time to return to art. I was born in Germany in 1949, after the Second World War, and my parents, who wanted their seven children to study, told me that I needed a profession with which I could make a living, and ‘artist’ was not it. ‘Painter’ was not a woman’s profession. So, at the age of 65, despite a lifetime dedicated to Pedagogy, I finally took paintbrush in hand and decided to spend some time on the ‘other side of the classroom’.

I earned my degree at age 70, with a specialisation in flower painting. If I were to explain it now – five years later – I’d say I strive to see the transience of beauty, through flowers. And even then, I thought, “I wish I could paint the soul of a flower, the same way a portraitist paints the soul of a person, through what their eyes express, and how they act – their innermost values. So, I began collecting blooms. I decided to start with dying flowers. I chose a rose, and photographed it at the same time every day, for 24 days, in order to observe how it changed in colour and in fullness. I watched it wither and saw its shape transform.  

Why dying flowers? Well, I saw a beautiful blossom, and began to reflect upon its opposite… because that is how our own lives go. I saw my mother, who was so beautiful when she was young, and then, when she became ill, I watched her decline.

One day, I held a fading flower against the light, and saw colours I had never seen before. It was an iris – and they have such a variety of hues, the greens and blues, and reds. After that, I couldn’t stop. Flowers are like people. They have their own expression; they bow or stand straight. Some flowers are proud and show you their whole beauty.

To finish my degree, I presented six paintings to the examination board. To enable them to see the work properly, I held one of those canvases against the window so they could observe the spaces in the weave. One professor stopped me, and asked why I paint as I do, with no ground, or preparatory layer – layering paint directly on the canvas. I didn’t know what to say, except to tell him, “I have to see if it’s possible to paint this way.” An unprepared canvas absorbs more colour, and it’s not always easy to paint on a surface that is not smooth, but I found my answer – it’s possible.

I brought high quality canvases to my exam – 100 percent linen – but as far as brushes and colours were concerned, I chose the cheapest ones I could find. That was part of the experiment as well. I wanted to prove to myself that you don’t always have to have the best of the best to do something. You can’t wait around for circumstances to be perfect; you’ve just got to get to it. Whether or not you do good or bad work, depends on you.

I was invited to do a show in Stratford Gallery in England (2024), and the curator told me they wanted both the dying flower and the vibrant blossom. So, now, I’m starting to depict flowers at the height of their happiness. They are life in the purest state. They seem to be saying, ‘I am here. I want to be seen. I am alive!’ That’s exactly how I feel as an elderly person. In our society, the older you get, the more transparent you become. You are treated as if you are see-through, as if you don’t exist.

In fact, my husband was a judge, and as he got older, he used to tell me, “I was very arrogant in my youth. Now, I’ve come down to Earth and realised I’m nobody, just a fragment in this world.”

I remember my mother used to tell us children, “We are all just little kernels of corn” – tiny seeds, in a vast universe. When you are young, you don’t want to hear that sort of thing. Today, I wouldn’t say we are ‘nobody’. But I do think that no one is the same as another. And that is true of flowers too."

LINDA FALCONE