Young-Ja Zimmermann

Young-Ja Zimmermann was born in South Korea and has lived between Berlin and Munich, Germany, since 1970. The encounter of different cultures lies at the heart of her artistic work — reaching beyond her own everyday life into something universal.

After studies in psychology with a focus on intercultural family theory, she spent many years working in crisis intervention. Her growing interest in art therapy led her to practice it for many years — an experience that ultimately drew her to painting itself. The sensitivity for tension that shaped her early on now finds expression in the confrontational use of materials, particularly in collage, and in the charged convergence of European abstraction with East Asian tradition. Conflict and confrontation, in the course of working through each piece, resolve into harmony — without ever fully suppressing the original tension. It remains present in the lower layers of colour, a reminder of the utopian moment in every attempt at reconciling difference.

Young-Ja Zimmermann was trained under the influence of Prof. Ferenc Jadi and Rebecca Uhlig in Berlin, Franz Hitzler in Munich, and most formatively Alfred Darda in Munich. She is a member of GEDOK Berlin, the Münchener Künstlerhaus, and the Kunstverein KunstHaus Potsdam e.V.

In 2018 she received the World KHMA Certificate at the 40th HMA Prize Competition in Seoul, followed in 2020 by the special prize of the Tancheon Contemporary Artists Association, also in Seoul.

Her paintings have appeared as illustrations and cover works in several publications, and she has shown her work in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Germany, Korea, China, Austria, and Switzerland