Stephan Balkenhol valuation
German sculptor of painted figures carved straight from tree trunks, above all the man in a white shirt and black trousers.
Stephan Balkenhol was born in Fritzlar, in Hesse, in 1957 and studied at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg from 1976 to 1982, when abstraction, Minimalism and Conceptual art dominated and figurative sculpture was out of favour.
What a work by Stephan Balkenhol is worth
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Bio
Stephan Balkenhol was born in Fritzlar, in Hesse, in 1957 and studied at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg from 1976 to 1982, when abstraction, Minimalism and Conceptual art dominated and figurative sculpture was out of favour. He carves his figures directly from a single block of wood, poplar, wawa, cedar or Douglas fir, with mallet and chisel, leaving every mark of the tool, and paints them simply to structure the forms: men in white shirts and dark trousers, women in plain dresses, animals and hybrid creatures, standing at human height on rough-hewn plinths that are part of the same block. His figures show little emotion and tell no story; he has said that what is hidden in them is for the viewer to find. Early works echo classical nudes on pedestals; from the 1990s he added animals, hybrids, architecture and reliefs. He is professor of sculpture at the art academy in Karlsruhe and lives and works in Karlsruhe, Kassel and Meisenthal in France.
Each carving is unique, and wood moves: radial cracks along the grain are natural to his method and expected, but new splits, insect damage, paint losses and damage to the plinth need checking. He also makes bronzes in editions, reliefs, drawings and prints, and the edition and date should be clear for each. Thaddaeus Ropac represents him.
Fritzlar, Hamburg and the public figures
His public sculptures include Big Man with a Little Man on the Pariser Platz in Berlin, Everyman in Edinburgh, a Big Head Column for the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice and a larger-than-life man in Toronto, installed in 2019.
Solo exhibitions include the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg in 2008 and 2009, the Museum of Grenoble in 2010 and the Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg in 2020 and 2021.
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