Christina Zimpel

Christina Zimpel is an Australian contemporary artist, born in Perth in 1961 and now based in New York, where she works from her studio at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Before focusing fully on her art, Zimpel had a successful career in fashion and graphic design, including working as an art director for Australian and U.S. Vogue.

Her paintings are instantly recognizable for their bold colours, simplified forms and expressive figurative style. Portraits—particularly female figures—are central to her practice, with faces and bodies reduced to strong lines, shapes and large areas of saturated colour. Her background in fashion, photography and design remains clearly visible in her compositions.

Zimpel's work explores personality, identity and human behaviour, often capturing small gestures and expressions rather than aiming for conventional realism. There is a playful quality to her work, but also a sense of vulnerability and emotion beneath the colourful surfaces.

She has exhibited internationally across New York, London, Sydney, Madrid, Brussels and Aalborg, and her work was included in Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art & Culture at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2025. She has also exhibited several times with HAGD Contemporary in Aalborg, including the solo exhibition We in 2025.