Donna Volta Newmen

Donna Volta Newmen (*1990 in Chemnitz) is a visual artist whose work merges traditional intaglio printing with interdisciplinary methods across paper and film. Focusing on portraiture, she explores themes of identity, power, and historical memory. Her portraits challenge conventional ideals and offer new perspectives through narratives of resistance and vulnerability.

Newmen often integrates the textures of plants, merging botanical elements with printmaking techniques. Her works reveal subtle affinities between plant and person, intertwining organic forms with human presence.

Respecting the individuality and complexity of her subjects – drawn from history, myth, or fiction – she avoids common editions by continuously modifying the plate, layering intaglio techniques with painterly monotype elements to create one-off mono-prints or varied editions, each revealing a different facet of character.

Raised in a printmaking atelier, Newmen studied fine art and earned her MA in Fine Art and Design from the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam in 2019. In recent years, she has created works and projects for exhibitions in Germany and abroad, including at the Museum Gunzenhauser / KunstsammlungenChemnitz, Stuttgart Ballet, Kunstverein Wagenhalle Stuttgart, soft power Berlin, Istanbul Design Biennial, Performance Philosophy Biennale Amsterdam, and the British Film Institute.