Rapunzel, the famous fairy-tale character of the Brothers Grimm, comes from the world of magic. She is the girl, lover, woman and mother who escapes from imprisonment. Elke Härtel awakens Rapunzel to new life, modelled in clay and then cast in plaster and bronze. The publication documents the fascinating process of creation with lavish illustrations. Elke Härtel draws on inner pictorial worlds as well as on fairy tales, myths and religious concepts. She takes her strong, usually female figures from the depths of dreams and from literary references. Born in 1978, she studied at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin and the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Her sculptures and large-format drawings have already been shown in the Lenbachhaus München and in the Diocesan Museum in Freising, amongst other places. Thanks to her numerous projects in the public space she occupies an influential position in contemporary sculpture, as this evocative pictorial volume impressively demonstrates.