Volker Stelzmann

The 73-year-old, Dresden-born artist, former instructor at the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts and, since 2006, professor emeritus at the Berlin University of Art, now devotes his entire time to painting. Stelzmann paintings, intriguingly reminiscent of the old masters, are characterized by multi-figure compositions emerging from an inferred and dim background. The countenance and bearing of the figures prove particularly confounding for the viewer: women and men are to be seen – walking, bending over or in the middle of sweeping gestures – amidst urban scenarios and/or mannerist Biblical scenes. Street scenes, carnivals, circuses, varieties and biblical locals, especially those of the Passion, are the stages, where the artist’s characters act out their allegorical roles in the theatrum mundi. The account of the Passion, with the scenes of the Christ carrying the Cross or the Last Supper, holds a particular position in the work of Stelzmann, for within this narrative the philosophical question of human existence is placed the most clearly. Within his occasionally grotesque-appearing pictorial scenes, Stelzmann uses his distinctly own and subtle irony to explore social identity as well as the human characters – and all their modes of behavior – populating it. Absent eyes gazing from exaggerated, puppet-like and voiceless faces reveal forlorn souls of society, offer a fascinating manifestation of Stelzmann merciless bit simultaneously humane image of humanity, and encourage philosophical reflection within the viewer.