Hella De Santarossa

Hella De Santarossa (* 1949 in Düsseldorf-Kaiserswerth) is a German painter, glass artist, sculptor, performance artist, and filmmaker. Her works are attributed to the neo-expressionism of the Junge Wilde (Young Wild Ones) and can be found in the Berlin Reichstag, public spaces, churches, museums, and art collections, among other places. She lives and works as a freelance cross-art artist in Berlin.
She studied free painting at the University of the Arts (West Berlin) and was a master student of Professor Karl-Horst Hödicke.
She was a founding member of the Galerie am Moritzplatz in 1978 and was artist chairwoman of the Künstlerhaus Bethanien from 1982 to 1992.
Since 1982, Hella De Santarossa has been a visiting professor at the Berlin University of the Arts in 1982, the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts in 1984, the Slade School in London in 1986, the College of the Arts in Sydney in 1992, and the Fine Art School in Melbourne. 
In 1987, she won the competition organized by the Berlin Senate Administration for the redesign of Theodor-Heuss-Platz with her design for the glass fountain sculpture “Blauer Obelisk” (completed in 1995). 
“These are all images of memory,” she says of her work. They often have to do with dance and movement, with the passion and ecstasy of life. 
Because pigeonholing, the artificial separation between painting, sculpture, photography, and film, for example, has always been a thorn in her side, the cross-art artist transcended these boundaries very early on. She also expresses her rebellion against restrictions and arbitrariness of any kind through movement. “I dance the pictures,” she says, beaming with her intense sea-green eyes. In fact, she cannot help but dance while painting and paint while dancing. “Because movement is simply everything to me.”