Stephan Spicher

Based on intensive observations of nature, Stephan Spicher’s artistic practice revolves around the question of which forces are hidden behind all entities, which energies cause a permanent cycle of growth and decay. In order to represent the processual in nature, he concentrates on the line in his drawings and paintings, with its opposing characteristics such as stability, order and orientation on the one hand, and vitality, movement and change on the other. For Spicher, the line has – in the final analysis – a universal character: “One can go out into the world and speak of the line everywhere, on the plane and in three-dimensional space. The same basic laws are valid everywhere” (Stephan Spicher 2012).

In the series Blossom, on which the artist has been working continuously since 2003, the line in the paintings is transformed into plant motifs such as blossoms or stems unified by flat color fields, and the most recent works in the series Blooming – Fading (2018), for example, are committed to pure abstraction. Guided by his intuition, Spicher draws ink lines in shades of green and red on large-format hand-made paper, which partially develop in a circular manner, overlap, move towards and away from one another and/or abruptly lose themselves. Through the sweeping execution of lines drawn with a brush, he creates works full of tension and vibrancy.

Stephan Spicher was born in 1950 in Basel. He graduated from the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule in Basel and was a student of the Italian painter Beppe Assenza. Spicher’s works are regularly shown at international art fairs and in solo and group shows in Switzerland and around the globe – especially in Japan, Indonesia, Russia and in the USA. Works by the artist can be found in numerous museum, cantonal and corporate collections such as the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, the Art Collection of the Canton of Zurich and the UBS Art Collection. Spicher lives and works in Basel and Maggia TI.

Submitted by Galleria Sacchetti