A female artist in Hamburg: Juliane Golbs and the quiet of the studio

Anyone looking for an artist in Hamburg is rarely looking for a name alone. They are looking for a signature that suits the city: reserved yet full of energy, rooted and at the same time open to the world. Juliane Golbs is such an artist. Her studio is in Hamburg, her works hang in private collections, and her collaborations reach from the Elbchaussee to Venice.

This article describes what the city has to do with her painting, where you can experience her work in Hamburg, and what a visit to the studio is like.

Hamburg as a sounding board

Hamburg shapes its artists in a quiet way. The light over the Alster changes by the hour, the Elbe carries colours no palette fully captures, and the Hanseatic temperament asks for substance rather than volume. These qualities reappear in the works of Juliane Golbs: they glow without dazzling. They are powerful without being intrusive.

Golbs is a Hamburger by choice: born in Schwerin, she moved to Hamburg at 18. Today her work takes her as far as the Côte d’Azur and Venice. But the studio in which the works are made is here. Here she works, here she discards, here she builds up layer upon layer.

The light of the Elbe and the Alster

Golbs names the sky, buildings and the colours the sun takes on during the day as her sources of inspiration. In Hamburg this spectrum is especially wide. On the Alster the morning light is often silvery and cool; the water reflects it and brightens the façades. Over the Elbe there is frequently a damp veil that softens colours and dissolves contours. In the evening, water and brick turn warm.

These shifts recur in her paintings – not as the depiction of a view, but as temperature: a cool blue beside a warm apricot, a muted grey on which gold begins to glow. The gold itself is also a response to this light. It registers every change in the room and makes it visible. A painting that looks calm and cool under a grey Hamburg sky turns warm in the low evening sun.

Anyone choosing a work for a room should therefore also consider which way it faces. A room with north light shows colours evenly and clearly; a west-facing room makes the gold glow in the evening.

The studio: a place of concentration

Juliane Golbs's studio is a working space governed by an almost daily discipline: the translation of emotion into colour. That is why it opens by appointment only. Those who come take their time.

During a private appointment you see works in progress and works that are finished and waiting for their place. You see the materials: gold leaf, pigments, canvases. And you experience how differently a painting looks as the light changes. More about this place can be found on the Studio page.

What distinguishes her painting

Juliane Golbs's art combines romantic motifs with an expressive line. Three features stand out:

1. Gold as a carrier of light. 24-carat gold leaf and gold creams are used so that they take in the light of the room and give it back. A painting looks different in the morning than in the evening. More in Gold leaf in painting.
2. The hand in the picture. Golbs applies many layers of paint with her fingers. This makes each work a unique piece that cannot be reproduced.
3. Attitude. Her paintings are grounded in confidence. They show life as full and beautiful without being naïve.

There is also a tension that only becomes apparent on longer viewing: from a distance, many paintings read as a single chord of colour. Step closer and they break up into blossom forms, lines, splashes and traces of chalk. These two readings – calm from afar, lively from close up – make the works suited to rooms one passes through every day.

Hamburg and its collectors

Hamburg has a long tradition of private collecting, closely bound up with the Kunsthalle, the city's great art museum. Alfred Lichtwark, its director from 1886, wanted not only to supply Hamburg's citizens with art but to teach them to see. His book “Übungen in der Betrachtung von Kunstwerken” (Exercises in Looking at Works of Art) of 1897 became his most widely read work. He founded a collection of pictures of Hamburg and commissioned portraits and views of the city from German and foreign artists for it, as the Neue Deutsche Biographie records.

Something of this attitude has remained in the city: Hamburg collectors rarely buy loudly. They look for a long time, ask about origin and material, and hang art not for display but to live with it. The works of Juliane Golbs are made for exactly this kind of collecting. They do not demand a grand stage, but they reward the repeated look.

An artist in dialogue with the city

Since 2025 Juliane Golbs has been artist in residence at the Louis C. Jacob, one of the city's most storied hotels. On the lime-tree terrace above the Elbe, which Max Liebermann painted, sketches and paintings are created. The terrace was one of the reasons she chose the house. According to Tageskarte, painting classes are planned in which guests can follow the creative process, as well as exhibitions of originals, art prints and postcards, and an art-and-cuisine gala for 2026. The house celebrates its 235th anniversary in 2026. The story of this connection is told in Artist in residence at the Louis C. Jacob.

Her charitable work is anchored in Hamburg too: the NCL Foundation, whose ambassador she has been since 2018, is based in the city. For the foundation she has created joint works with Joss Stone and Leonie Beck. At the Elbjazz Festival 2026, Golbs painted live in the Grand Hall of the Elbphilharmonie to the music of Joss Stone; the painting was auctioned for the benefit of the foundation. More in Art that carries responsibility.

Exhibitions in Hamburg

In Hamburg, works by Juliane Golbs were shown at Barlach Halle K from 9 to 11 December 2021: unique pieces finished with gold cream, gold leaf, acrylic and lacquers. The exhibition Fifth Season followed in 2024. In 2025 she showed an anniversary exhibition at the AEZ shopping centre, whose proceeds went in full to the NCL Foundation. Current exhibitions and dates are available from the studio and on the Exhibitions page.

Who her works are made for

The works of Juliane Golbs are made for rooms with character: for private homes that need calm, for houses that seek warmth, for companies and hotels that want to show their guests something lasting.

Hamburg's period apartments with high ceilings and stucco take large-format works particularly well. Lofts in former warehouses or factories give strong colours a calm background. In modern buildings with large windows, the gold comes into its own above all in the evening, when artificial light takes over.

Hanging a painting at home

A few basic rules help a work look in your own room the way it did in the studio.

Height. Museums and galleries usually hang paintings so that their centre sits at roughly eye level, about 145 to 155 centimetres (57 to 61 inches) above the floor. Above a sofa or sideboard a painting may hang lower, so that furniture and work belong together. A gap of a hand's width up to twenty centimetres above the edge of the furniture usually looks calm.

Distance. Large formats need space in front of them. As a rule of thumb, the viewing distance should be at least the length of the diagonal of the painting, better one and a half times that. In a narrow hallway a smaller format often has more impact than a large one.

Light. Direct midday sun is ideal for no painting. Daylight from the side is better, and in the evening a warm spotlight falling at an angle from above. With gold in particular, the angle of the light makes a great difference: lit from the front it looks flat; from the side it begins to shimmer.

Surroundings. A wall need not be white. A warm grey, an off-white or a deep green can even strengthen the colours of a painting. What matters is that the wall around the painting stays calm.

If you are unsure, these questions can be discussed during a studio visit, or you can hang the work at home on trial.

If you are thinking of acquiring an original, Buying abstract art offers calm guidance. If you would like a work for a particular room, read the article on commissioning a work.

Studio visits and trial hanging

A visit to the studio begins with a short enquiry via the contact form. It helps to say what you are looking for: for which room, which wall, roughly what size. The artist can then set out suitable works.

On site there is time to look at the paintings from different distances, to talk about materials and process, and to ask questions you might not ask in a gallery. There is no obligation to buy.

Sometimes a question remains after the visit: does the painting really suit my space, this light, this furniture? That is what the trial hanging is for. For a small fee, a work can hang in your home for a while. If you decide to keep the painting, the fee is credited when you buy it. In this way the decision is made where the work will later live.

And if you would like to meet the artist herself: the studio in Hamburg opens by appointment. A short enquiry is all it takes.