Kurt Stimmeder

I focus on small, often overlooked moments in which the body reveals something internal. Hands often play a central role — their tension, hesitation or uncertainty can express more than a face. I look for those quiet, charged moments in which the figure reveals something without showing it directly.

Themes

Psychological tension is the central driving motif — dynamics between individuals, within groups, and internally. Mythology, philosophy and systemic psychology widen the framework behind the work.

Visual Language

A contemporary realism that references the past without getting stuck in it. Much of the work feels like memory — slightly displaced, yet still present. Figures read as allegory, opening interpretive space.

Process

Each painting develops through short, simple movement studies — gestures visible only for a brief moment, never staged. One painting leads to the next, like links in a chain; themes continue, transform, or resurface.

Materials

Oil painting is the central medium — for its depth and physicality. Alongside it, lithography shifts the way the subject is seen and allows a new approach to recurring motifs.

The Feast — New Series, 2026

Selected available works.

Kurt Stimmeder (b. 1972, Austria) lives and works in Linz. Working in psychological, gesture-based figuration, his oil paintings locate emotional tension in the body and the hands. His work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across the United States, Europe, South America and Asia, including a solo exhibition in New York (2025).