Margaret Hunter, b. 1948

Hunter trained at the Glasgow School of Art in her early thirties, to graduate in 1985, fulfilling a long-held ambition. Her drive led her to study in Berlin, under the guidance of George Baselitz (b. 1938) at the Hochschule der Kunste. The political state of her new adoptive city became tied to the development of her work, as she was first very aware of the the conflict between her home in West Berlin, and the surrounding eastern German state, and then the complex emotions following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Hunter was later invited to create an artwork for the Wall itself, which became pivotal to her career, on the 1.3km stretch that was preserved as the East Side Gallery. Thus Hunter became well established in both Britain and Germany, with her work entering numerous national collections in both countries. Her work embraces the human condition, often expressed through a lone female figure, a vehicle to explore the personal, political, cultural and social.