Discover how Austrian artist Kurt Stimmeder explores the emotional and symbolic power of painting hands—using gesture as a psychological language in his evocative, figurative works.
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There is a fleeting moment between thought and gesture—intimate, unobserved—in which truth reveals itself not through words, but through the language of the hand.
Kurt Stimmeder devotes his work to these thresholds: quiet transitions where the visible meets the invisible. His oil paintings are marked by a sensitive precision and deep psychological charge. Hands often take center stage—not merely anatomical studies, but carriers of inner landscapes, revealing memories, tensions, and longings.
In one of his key works, tattooed hands enclose a fractured black form repaired with gold, inspired by the Japanese art of Kintsugi. Here, gesture and symbol converge: the visible and the hidden, the wound and its reverence, the fragile balance of holding on and letting go.
Stimmeder’s visual language is rooted in figurative tradition, yet deeply contemporary in its resonance. His compositions do not tell stories in the classic sense—they act as psychological portraits without faces, snapshots of inner states. Interpretation remains deliberately open; the viewer is invited to pause, sense, and reflect.
His approach to painting grew out of a biographical need to give form to the unspeakable. Visual language—traced back to the drawing hands of his parents—became a way to access and express the inner world. Though music once served as his mode of expression, painting offered the form that endured: one that condenses and reveals.
Stimmeder’s works are often born from concentrated inner impulses rather than long-drawn processes. Yet they appear layered, complex, and nuanced. It is this rare combination of intuition, symbolism, and technical depth that defines his unmistakable voice.
Over the coming months, Gallery Makowski will present his work in two group exhibitions and a solo show in New York. His paintings have previously been shown at Clio Art Fair (New York) and Context Art Miami. In 2025, his painting “The Green Trout” was featured as an Emerging Artist selection in the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize. His works are held in private collections across Europe, the US, and Asia.
Website: www.kurtstimmeder.com
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