Richard Stumm

For the son of a baker, it is natural that his father bakes bread.
For me, it was natural that my father painted pictures.
When there was no other child to play with, I would sit in his studio, arranging paint tubes and pens, watching his images slowly come into being.
My father was stingy with his materials. For us children, there were only blue pencils. My earliest works were blue pencil lines deeply engraved into the paper—occasionally softened with saliva.

To my wonderfully Catholic mother, who always carefully concealed her body from our curious eyes, I likely owe the dominant theme of my current work: the depiction of the female nude.
At first, she sparked my interest in art history. Only the richly illustrated art books from my father’s collection offered a legal window into images of the naked female form. Titian’s Venus, Ingres’ back studies, Modigliani’s elegant nudes—long before I knew what I was looking for, I already knew where to find it.
Drawing the human figure during my studies was merely the necessary deepening of a path already chosen. Later, I spent 25 years teaching life drawing.

In an age of virtual worlds, the real body becomes both reactionary and subversive.
In this sense, I gladly embrace both: reaction...

Studied at the Institute for Visual Arts at Philipps-University Marburg under Professor Günter Schäfer

1984 Heylshof, Worms
1985 Kunstverein Marburg
1988 „50 Jahre danach“, Installation, Schloss Marburg
1992 Landesvertretung Rheinland-Pfalz, Brüssel
1993 Schloß Waldthausen, Mainz
1996 Hessische Landesvertretung, Berlin
1997 Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen, Berlin
2007 „Der Betrug“, Nibelungen-Festspiele in Worms
2008 Kunsthalle Gießen, „Nibelungen“
2009 Kunsthalle Gießen, „Büchner“
2012 TTZ, Marburg
2013 KIZ, Giessen, „Aus der Welt“
2015 „Mare nostrum“, Lutherische Pfarrkirche Marburg
2015 pARTnerStädte, Stadtschloß  Eisenach
         Stadtmaler in Eisenach
2016 Erwin-Piscator-Haus Marburg