Leif Trenkler is considered an important representative of New Figuration in Germany. His works are among others in the collections of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Deutsche Bank and the Münchner Rückversicherung.
Born in Wiesbaden in 1960, he studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt and at the Düsseldorf Art Academy with Thomas Bayerle, Felix Droese and Jörg Immendorff.
His works, which oscillate between realism and surrealism, are impressive stagings with expressive light reflections. They are snapshots and everyday scenes, consisting of clear architecture, idyllic landscape and people acting more in the background. In his works, painted on unprimed birch wood in complex color compositions, there is deliberately no clear differentiation between fiction and reality: This becomes clear in the expressive, deliberately overdriven colorfulness of his pictorial worlds. He dissolves the architectural or vegetal space and draws in an exciting, fantastic level whose visual quality is fascinating.
His oeuvre is influenced by various styles of art history. The painting surface wood makes you think of artists like Piero della Francesca, or Jan van Eyck, the lighting and the linear perspective of Masaccio, further influenced him the painting style of the Impressionists, who painted shadows purple, there are surrealist echoes of Ives Tanguy, individual images evoke motifs from David Hockney paintings and faces reminiscent of those of Alex Katz.
Leif Trenkler creates a contemplative dream world from a wide variety of elements and creates his very own style. Magical moments that take the viewer to places of longing and puzzle him as much as the titles of the pictures, which often diverge from the representation.