Germaine Maas was born on 4 February 1931 in Wiltz. At the age of 9, while standing with her father in the garden of their house in Wiltz, dazzled by the lush flowers, she announced to her stunned father her decision to become an artist. The destiny of this fiercely determined young girl was marked out that day.
In 1948, the family moved to Remich and this was the beginning of a love story between Ger Maas and the Moselle.
At the age of 15, she was a pupil at the École d'Artisans de l'Etat in Luxembourg with Lucien Wercollier as her teacher. She first studied in Paris. Back in Luxembourg, she found a job as an editor at the "Revue". At the end of 1952, she stopped working exclusively for the "Revue" and began to work for other press titles.
Ger Maas resumed her training as a painter in Munich and attended Oskar Kokoschka's "Schule des Sehens" in Salzburg in 1961. As a professional artist, she joined a group of students under Kokoschka's personal guidance. Her unquenchable thirst for learning enabled Ger Maas to forge her own style.
In Munich Ger Maas married Alexander von Neuhoff von der Ley. Tamara was born to them in 1956. The couple divorced in 1965. Ger Maas leaves Munich and settles in Luxembourg City where the artist mainly works. She will have working pied-à-terre in Paris and Brussels.
The unusual variety of her work is well received in Luxembourg and throughout Europe. Ger Maas observes her environment in order to transform her impressions into paintings. In addition to still lifes with flowers, she paints lively scenes in her own dynamic style with different techniques in oil, watercolour and ink. Her extensive oeuvre, which mainly features landscapes, flowers and people, culminated in a major retrospective in 2012. In the same year she received a European prize. In addition to her paintings, the artist illustrates books and writes poetry.
Her husband Jos Cappa, an art historian and critic, wrote a biographical book about her, entitled "Ger Maas: Life of a Painter".
The well-known artist died on 28 March 2020.
Sources:
● https://onsstad.vdl.lu/fileadmin/uploads/media/ons_stad_97-2011_66-67.pdf
● https://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:d7296f48-4fc4-40c3-9f70-a9faeb1a5eb9.0001.06/DOC_2&format=PDF
● Guiseppe Cappa - Ger Maas: vie de peintre , Editions saint-paul, 2006