DUSSELDORF.- Born in 1967, German artist Tomma Abts ranks among the outstanding female painters of her generation. She was awarded the Turner Prize in 2006, and her work has featured in solo exhibitions at such renowned institutions as Kunsthalle Basel, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York. The show at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf is the London-based artist’s first solo exhibition at an institution in the Rhineland, where she is teaching since summer 2010, having taken up a professorship at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. A slow and rigorous production process is a distinguishing feature of Tomma Abts’ work. Although she follows a fixed method in her painting, applying purely geometrical shapes to a classic 48 x 38 cm portrait format in layer after layer of oil and acrylic paint, her painting is far removed from serial production. The individuality of each of her pi