A work by Martin Stommel

Martin Stommel was born in 1969 in Bonn, Germany. He began early

with painting and had his first exposition at the age of 16 years. His

artistic education he received 1993 – 2001 by the russian painter

Boris Birger and studied at the stately academies of Munich and

Berlin with Prof. Weißhaar and Prof. Fußmann.

From the 1980’s on his working range has been painting in oil, draw-

ing and etching, he treated classical themes like portrait, landscape,

nude and illustration.

In the year 2000 he became acquainted with the arts theoretician Sir

Ernst Gombrich, who encouraged the artist in his affection to figura-

tive working.

During a couple of years until about 2007 Stommel worked on

figures and scenes of Circus artistry. In the sphere of Circus he

established contacts, portrayed some of the most famous clowns

and presented these works on invitation of Prince Rainier III at the

Monaco Circus festival.

In the same course of time the artist completed his large series of

illustrations on the Divine Comedy, consisting of about 70 etchings

and mezzotintos. The expositions of this work were supported by the

Deutsche Dante Gesellschaft.

In the middle of this decade Stommel started painting at large sizes,

choosing his subjects more and more in the field of Greek and Chris-

tian mythology.

Regarding his technique and process of working, Stommel shows all

tendencies to typical Renaissance values, emphasising draftsmanship,

nature and proportion. For his large canvases, he produces sketches

and bozzettos, working with models and studying the incidence of

light. Even doing so, his paintings are executed in a fast and

expressive manner, made a la prima and rarely reworked.

Done