Donna Volta Newmen

Donna Volta Newmen was born in 1990 in Chemnitz, Germany. She grew up in a printmaking atelier, an environment that deeply shaped her early visual sensibility. After her foundational training, she went on to earn an MA in Fine Art and Design from the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam in 2019. Newmen has since shown her work in a number of venues in Germany and abroad — among them the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz / Museum Gunzenhauser, the Istanbul Design Biennial, and the British Film Institute — as well as collaborating with institutions like Stuttgart Ballet and Kunstverein Wagenhalle in Stuttgart.

Newmen’s core practice lies in traditional intaglio printing — especially etching, aquatint, and drypoint — but she consistently pushes their boundaries by blending them with interdisciplinary methods, such as film or painterly monotype. She does not settle for static edition runs; rather, she frequently modifies her plates, layering fresh monotype elements over etching grounds, or introducing painterly interventions to produce unique mono-prints or editions wherein each work carries its own distinct imprint. Her work combines different techniques such as etching, aquatint, and monotype.

In Newmen’s imagery portraiture figures centrally: her subjects may come from history, myth, or invention, but in all cases she foregrounds vulnerability, resilience, and the complexity of self. She often interweaves botanical textures and organic forms in her portraits, suggesting a resonance between person and environment. The interplay of line, shadow, and texture gives her work a haunting, meditative quality.