Portrait: Lukas Giesler

Wilhelm Neusser is a painter whose atmospheric landscapes draw on the legacy of German Romanticism while reframing its ideals through the lens of 21st-century environmental precarity. His work explores how land continues to register the sublime - not as heroic grandeur, but as a fragile, shifting presence shaped by ecological uncertainty and perceptual complexity. Depicting verdant hills, craggy peaks, or luminous skies, Neusser’s paintings are based on observation, memory, and imagination instigating reflection on how beauty, landscape, and time interweave in an era of environmental change. The human figure appears as stand in for our own experience of nature as both vulnerable resource and treacherous terrain.

Born in Cologne, Germany, Neusser studied at Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe and at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe. Neusser resided in Cologne until his relocation to the United States in 2011 and now lives and works in Somerville, MA. His work is represented through Abigail Ogilvy Gallery in Los Angeles, and he teaches at Boston University’s College of Fine Arts.

Neusser’s artwork has been widely exhibited, and he has received many awards and fellowships. In addition to numerous gallery exhibitions, his work was  included in the following institutional exhibitions: Space as Narrative, Concord Art Center, Concord, MA, 2017, Elsewhere, Goethe-Institut, Boston, MA, 2017, The Lure of the Dark, MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA, 2018, Pastoral Present, Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, MA, 2019, Field Visions, Stone Gallery, Boston University, Boston, MA, 2022. In 2020 and 2022 Neusser was honored with a finalist grant in painting from the Mass Cultural Council. Additional awards and recognition include the MASS MoCA Studio Program (2017) and the Vermont Studio Center (2013 and 2015). Neusser’s work has been included in notable publications, including The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Artscope Magazine, Boston.com, and Big Red & Shiny.