Madeleine Dietz is well - known for her work which both combines and contrasts steel and earth. The first impression one gets is the contrast, which has associations with technology and nature, order and chaos, hard and soft, male and female, logic and emotionality, love and hate, fear and joy, protection and rejection. She creates a tension field between open and closed, but the commitment is not limited to that. Earth is not only a live-giving force it also stands for the act of man’s creation. At the same time there is also the moment of decay and of death.

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Everybody remembers the Christian formula “Earth you are, and to earth you shall return.” Considering that Madeleine Dietz gains the lumps of earth for her pilings through the drying process, the element water takes on a very specific meaning for her work. Mixed with water, earth becomes that moldable paste from which the artist obtains one of her sculptural materials. Here we notice another phenomenon of man’s existence: time. The movement of water in real time is a precondition for the processes of growth and development. Time is necessary to transform the muddy earth through the drying process into cracked lumps of different sized forms. And time is demanded as a condition for dealing with the oeuvre of Madeleine Dietz, for these works whose contents and intentions overlap all times, and who are thus to be understood as being valid beyond our time.  Everything what we know about light, is questioned in these works. Light comes from the sun from above. That the light comes from below out of the earth is irritating and against all nature experiences. Dietz finds metaphors for the basic questions of the existence of life. It is about storing energy, pictures of coming into life and decay, a clear rhythm of human life.  

Madeleine Dietz was born in Mannheim, Germany and studied at the local art school from 1970 to 1974. She lives and works in Rheinland Pfalz in Germany. In 2012, Dietz exhibited in Galerie Georg Nothelfer (Berlin), Museum der Minoriten (Graz), and Galerie C. Grimaldis (Baltimore, Maryland), among others. Her work is in many museums and private collections, including the Kunsthalle Mannheim, Wilhelm - Hack Museum (Ludwigshafen), Museum of Contemporary Art (Neubrandenburg), and the New Museum (Weserburg).