About

Simone Kaltenegger is a Berlin-based, self-taught abstract artist who felt and lived out her passion for art as a teenager. After many years in the fashion industry and owner of her own label, her desire to paint came back stronger than ever in 2021 and so Kaltenegger shifted from her previous focus on figurative pencil drawings, to abstract painting.

Kaltenegger works primarily with acrylics, incorporating spray paint, charcoal and oil pastel. Black dominates her color palette, but for the street notes series she also uses vibrant colors. Her works are dark but not gloomy, rather mystical and emotionally driven. In contrast to the very planned development process in fashion, she paints very intuitively and is guided by the painting process and existing emotions. She experiments with different techniques, plays with water as a medium and often comes back to a very abstract representation of the figurative.

Her intuitive process results in mystical artworks that invite various interpretations, often revealing figurative elements. Even as a child, her great imagination allowed her to discover figures and animals, for example, in the grain of the wooden floor or in clouds. Today, for her, a painting is finished when she is able to discover something figurative or a story there as well. Kaltenegger draws inspiration from Berlin’s post-vandalism aesthetic, on crumbling and tagged facades, translating urban chaos into poetic abstraction, while listening to techno music.

Group Exhibitions

2025
ALLES IN BUTTER | Kunstfabrik HB55, Berlin
GROUPSHOW #9 | New & Abstract Showroom, Berlin
FRAGMENTS OF INFINITY | Kunstfabrik HB55, Berlin (Curator)
SLEEP | Margarine at Kunstfabrik HB55, Berlin

2024
RECLAIM REALITY | rosalux, Berlin
LANGE NACHT DER BILDER | Kunstfabrik HB55, Berlin

2023

MONO | ExtractArt in Cooperation with Arte Laguna Prize, Berlin
55X3 | Kunstfabrik HB55, Berlin
BLACK AND WHITE | LiTE-HAUS Galerie, Berlin

Publications

2023
NEWARTPROJECT, Issue 2
PURPLEHAZE Magazine, Issue 009 – Theme: The Body