Stephan Balkenhol: German wood artist with international renown

Stephan Balkenhol's career

Stephan Balkenhol was born in 1957 in Fritzlar/Hesse as the youngest of four sons. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts from 1976 to 1982 in Hamburg, including with the sculptor Ulrich Rückriem. Thanks to the Karl Schmidt Rottluff Scholarship, Balkenhol was also finally able to embark on his path as a sculptor. Since then, he has been creating his typical figurative wooden sculptures, which he works out of logs and then paints. Balkenhol values wood because of its properties:”Each material has a specific speed at which you can process it: clay can go very fast, stone is hard and requires a lot of time. Wood is in between and corresponds exactly to my personal temperament. ”

In his own opinion, Balkenhol also came to sculpture art because, as a child, he and his parents always visited museums and churches, which housed a large variety of wood-carved figures. He was also influenced by the forest landscapes of Luxembourg and Kassel. “When a linden tree was cut down on Wilhelmshöhe, I went there with the wheelbarrow and then spent several hours in the cellar. ”

Through his contribution to the exhibition”Sculpture projects Münster” 1987 It attracted attention beyond German borders for the first time: Balkenhol placed a “man with a green shirt and white pants” on the chimney ledge of a fire wall. The appearance of the sculpture resembled a real person so much that the police were called several times as passers-by thought they had discovered a suicide.

In addition to his artistic career, Balkenhol was a teacher at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt and from 1992 professor at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. He now lives and works in Karlsruhe, Berlin and Meisenthal, France.

Sculptures that tell stories

Softwoods such as African wawa wood are particularly fond of balkenhol. But sometimes he also uses hard oak, cedar, beech, linden or pine. His works, which are also produced as limited editions of bronze miniatures, are characterized by their simple elegance and expressive presence. Balkenhol has a unique ability to capture the essence of a subject and present it in a minimalistic yet captivating way. Although his works are remotely reminiscent of medieval carving techniques, they expand the traditional role of statues by depicting ordinary people and not famous or religious figures.

Contrary to an aesthetic ideal that has decisively defined sculpture since ancient times, there is nothing traditionally beautiful about the figures of the Hessian artist. The bases are reduced to the minimum of round wooden logs, which are usually left unprocessed. Nor do they convey a “message” in the traditional sense. Or as Balkenhol puts it: “My sculptures don't tell stories. There is something mysterious hidden in them. It is not my job to reveal it, but the viewer's job to discover it.” His most famous figure type is the man with black pants and a white shirt. The people portrayed do not show any clear emotions, but seem to look into the void and remain distant, anonymous and enigmatic.

That is why his human and animal figures populate buildings, streets or squares as a matter of course and even in museums appear almost inconspicuous — as if raptured. His 2006 office in front of ARTE's headquarters in Strasbourg was also Giraffe Man, one of his most famous sculptures, is of course appropriate to the overall picture despite its height of three meters. Balkenhol produces up to 100 large sculptures in one year; so far, there are likely to be far more than 2000 - the largest of which is over six meters high.

Internationally renowned artist

His contribution to the contemporary art world consists in highlighting the beauty of everyday life and the uniqueness of each individual and expressing them in inspiring sculptures that are well received all over the world. His works are in renowned museums and galleries issued. Including the National Museum of Art in Osaka, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Stephan Balkenhol's most important solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Emden, Germany (2018), Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Spain (2018), MMOMA — Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Russia (2016), Fondation Fernet-Branca, Saint-Louis, France (2016)), the National Museum of Art Osaka, Japan (2005) and the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, Germany (2003).

As already mentioned, Balkenhol also created various sculptures for public spaces. The most famous of these works include:

• “Four men on buoys” (1993) on the Elbe and Alster in Hamburg,
• “Four-figure group” (2005) in the atrium of the University of California, San Francisco
• “Rembrandt as a young man” (2006), Rembrandt's birthplace in Leiden.

The sculptor's sculptures were awarded in the past for prizes in the range of several thousand to over one hundred thousand euros sold and were usually above estimate at auctions. For example, the plant achieved”Man with white shirt and black pants” 2022 Instead of calculated 50,000 euros, a revenue of 100,000 euros.