Norbert Bisky was born son of the well known politician Lothar Bisky at Leipzig in 1970. He spent his youth in Berlin, where he soon got in contact with the local art scene. Initially, however, he pursued a theoretic path and studied German and art history at the Berlin Humboldt-University between 1990 and 1993. Subsequently Norbert Bisky joined the class of Georg Baselitz (1994-1999) at the Berlin University of the Arts and became his master student. In-between he participated in summer academies in Salzburg (1994 and 1995, with Jim Dine) and studied at the Faculdad de Bellas Artes der Universidad Complutense in Madrid) in 1995 on an Erasmus scholarship. In 2000 he received a scholarship from the foundation “Künstlerdorf Schöppingen”.
Norbert Bisky counts among the most important representatives of figurative painting in the new millennium. His early works, which must be observed from a perspective of current politics, have their origin in Polaroid photographs and examine art history in a post-modern sense. As of the turn of the millennium he has been making works in a realistic and Pop-Art manner, often of blonde boys, at times they have a slightly homo-erotic notion. Norbert Bisky increasingly reduced the palette of colors.
Many his idealized pictures of boys remind of propaganda art. Norbert Bisky, who grew up in the GDR, examines the art concepts of totalitarian systems and Socialist Realism in his art, and accordingly also his own past.
Since around 2007 Norbert Bisky turned away from the process of coming to terms with his past and began making powerful figure compositions with references to mythology, religion and everyday culture. The homo-erotic notion of his early works becomes more obvious. In terms of drawings, Norbert Bisky makes soft pencil and watercolor sheets of a charming study character.
Works by Norbert Bisky, who was guest professor at the Haute École d´Art et de Design in Geneva between 2008 and 2010, have been shown in solo shows around the world, the latest in New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Israel and Madrid.
Norbert Bisky lives and works in Berlin.