From 1959 until 1964 the sculptor attended Höhere Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt, from 1968 the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. Maderna likes to see her works integrated in natural space; by means of observing nature, she gains her own vision of things.
In sculpture she is not only interested in the dormant and static element but in the hardly visible movement. Just like in a landscape, distance and proximity fuse, it is important for her that the place where it is set up will absorb the sculpture in a way to make background and foreground melt together. Thus the sculpture can be taken back to its original sketch-like character. Her first observations were based on human beings who expressed specific basic attitudes of their existence. Such as synonyms for suffering, decomposition and the helplessness of the individual in a dynamic mass. Maderna strives for combining this ultimacy and hopelessness with earthy bodies, as if they had always been there. In her works, the artist combines contrasts: Organic and constructive elements, vegetable and human, sculptural and architectural forms. The works of her sculpture series Blöcke und Faltungen (Blocks and folds) would despite their size still appear light and moving, as if made of paper. From the stele she develops the sculptural group Erdweiser und Obzeiger, where the relationship between man, tree, gesture and interpretation thereof are unified. Both work groups combine movement and its simultaneous prevention, as if they were branches held by the wind. In her works she occupies herself with processes of movement and states of form and despite the size and weight of her sculptures they convey a feeling of lightness. In 1991, Maderna received the honorary prize of the region of Lower Austria and in 1996 the prize of the city of Vienna. The artist’s works were shown at Wiener Secession in 1982, 1987,1991 and 2003. The artist is also successful on an international level and her works are exhibited, amongst other places, in Basel, Bolzano and Milan.
