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"Baroque are my thoughts"
(Artur Stoll)

Artur Stoll de Norso - painter, draughtsman, sculptor. This is how the artist, born on June 11, 1947 in Freiburg, announces himself. Norso refers to the pretty village of Norsingen. It lies in picturesque surroundings just outside the city of Freiburg at the foot of the Upper Black Forest.

Between 1969 and 1975, Stoll studied at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. In 1974 he was awarded the Villa Romana Prize by the city of Florence. The sculpture entitled "Spiral" (ill.) dates from this year. It is a work made of plywood, paper and glue measuring 90x83x5 cm. Although the spiral motif is not one of the artist's leitmotifs, it is one of the important compositional elements of his work. A medium-format watercolor from 1994, also entitled "Spiral", can be seen in the anteroom of commercial director Bernhard Grotz.

In 1984, Stoll presented an installation with works from the years 1970 to 1973 and 1983 to 1984 at the Morat Institute for Art and Art Sciences in Freiburg (ill.). Here, too, numerous circular and spiral forms stand out, which in their combination illustrate an idiosyncratic dynamic. Perhaps Stoll wanted to suggest the movement of his lifeblood, in other words: the vitality of his artistic ability. A poem by the artist is helpful in making this interpretation transparent:

Bring straw to the city
Move the cathedral to the potato field
Baroque are my thoughts
Pink lighter
Dark tobacco
The stage and the dovecote
Blow by blow

... Baroque are his thoughts. The Figura Serpentinata, the lavish ornamentation and the lively compositions may be a source of inspiration. His poetic actions are also baroque. The down-to-earth is given a spectacular neighborhood of dignified buildings and sleek objects. The poetic construction could actually be conceived as a spiral, at least as a circular movement without a destination.

An ink drawing from 1985 may illustrate that Stoll sees himself as an artist who circles around his subjects until he has found the harmony between inner mood and outer object in order to give it an adequate form (ill.) The circular forms surround the profile like an aura. From below, a staircase arm jags upwards, ending in a spiral. The picture is entitled "The Painter". It is possibly a self-portrait, perhaps even a depiction in the iconographic tradition of "artist inspiration".

In 1982, the artist married Petra Deeg. Since 1983, he has been able to spend time each year in the studios of the Morat Institute in Boissano, Liguria. One year later, he was awarded the Regional Prize for Fine Arts by the Upper Rhine Economic Development Association. During these years, he created the "Butterfly Cycle". The watercolors show insect-like creatures undergoing metamorphosis into butterflies or other unknown small flying animals. Stoll succeeds in the daring balancing act between concretion and abstraction. Details such as wings or wing patterns, bulky legs or seemingly bobbing bodies can be precisely identified. They are integrated into a composition of hatching and lines that lend the picture complexity and figurative expression.

This also applies to the oil paintings, whose titles refer to specific subjects, be it "Still Life", "City Flower", "Norsingen" or "Blue in the Window". At first glance, the latter painting, a medium format measuring 30x40 cm from 1995, appears to be a pure color composition. The blue rectangular center is embedded as a complementary accent in an ochre-colored rectangle. Bar structures and the sharp contrast between light and dark create a spatial depth, so that the subject is quickly identified: the viewer stands in the room and looks out of the window into the intense blue of the sky. At the end of the 1980s, Stoll received two prizes, the Reinhold Schneider Prize of the City of Freiburg (1988) and the following year the Art Prize of the State of Baden-Württemberg. In 1999, he was awarded the Erich Heckel Prize of the State of Baden-Württemberg.

The lavishly applied color as well as the down-to-earth themes and motifs, which revolve around the artist's immediate space of experience, have created an unmistakable style that is unique in our art landscape. His paintings have become the trademark of an artistic soul characterized by vitality, imagination and sensuality. The coloring only appears unrestrained on the surface. At second glance, they reveal their delicate transitions and contrasts. The dynamic textures of the paintings and objects are only reflected on the surface of the retina for a short time before penetrating deep into the inner feelings of the viewer.

Dr. Ehrenfried Kluckert

The pictures were kindly provided by Artur Stoll & Petra Deeg-Stoll.