Christiane Baumgartner was born in 1967 in Leipzig, Germany, and studied there at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst before completing her Masters in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art in London in 1999.
Baumgartner is best known for the monumental woodcuts based on her own films and video stills. She first came to public attention in the UK in EAST international in 2004 and a year later with a major solo exhibition at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham. She was included in the groundbreaking exhibition, Eye on Europe, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 2006.
White Noise, a major solo retrospective toured to Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf, the Centre de la Gravure et de l’Image imprimée, La Louvière, Belgium, and Musée d’art et d’histoire, Geneva, in 2015 and 2016. Recent solo presentations include Print Center New York (2025), Strawberry Hill House, London (2023); LWL Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster (2023); Manif d’Art - The Quebec City Biennial, Canada (2019); Davis Museum, Wellesley College, Massachusetts (2018); Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2017); Goethe Institute, Hanoi (2012); Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf (2011) and Spinnerei archiv massiv, Leipzig (2010).
Recent group exhibitions include a US touring show, travelling to Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City (2025); Seattle Art Museum, Seattle (2024); and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2023). Further group shows include Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Los Angeles Country Museum of Art, California; Royal Academy of Arts, London; RISD Museum, Rhode Island; New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery, Salford (2025); Fotografie, Sächsische Akademie der Künste, Dresden (2024); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, (2024, 2023); National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (2023); Bellevue Arts Museum, Washington (2023); Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana, Lugano (2023); Albertina Modern, Vienna, (2023); Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit (2022); Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Birmingham (2022); National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington (2022); Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden (2021); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2021); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2020); Albertina, Vienna (2020) and Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2019).
Baumgartner was awarded the prestigious Mario Avati Printmaking Prize in 2015 by the Académie des beaux-arts, Paris, where she staged her first solo exhibition in France in the same year. In 2021 Baumgartner was the juror for the International Print Center New York's biannual open call exhibition and in 2022 she was elected a full member of the Saxon Academy of Arts, Dresden.
Baumgartner’s work is held in over eighty public collections around the world including the Albertina, Vienna; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; British Museum, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and National Gallery Victoria, Australia.
Christiane Baumgartner lives and works in Leipzig, Germany.
