Ulrich Barnickel was born in Weimar and trained in Burg Giebichenstein in Halle (Saale) from 1978 to 1984. He has been firmly established on the German sculptors' scene for more than three decades. The longtime devotion of this trained smith to iron as his preferred material, which can only be worked with strength and effort, has not changed up to the present. He is still fascinated by the dual interplay of elementary force and poetic lightness which has always marked his work.