prometheus
Stephan Balkenhol is a German artist known for his sculptures capturing the human form. Based in France and Germany, he specializes in wood sculptures, reliefs, drawings, and graphic techniques like lithography, woodcuts, and stencils. His distinct style features roughly carved and vibrantly painted wooden sculptures, often depicting people, animals, and architecture.
Balkenhol's subjects lack emotions, often gazing into emptiness, resulting in a distant and enigmatic aura. Wood is his primary medium, with softer woods allowing precise facial details while maintaining imperfections like chips, knots, and tool marks. The artist adds paint as a finishing touch, accentuating anatomy and vitality. The textured surfaces beneath the paint layer amplify the sense of life in Balkenhol's works.
Ernst Heinrich Barlach was a German expressionist sculptor, medallist, printmaker and writer. Although he was a supporter of the war in the years leading to World War I, his participation in the war made him change his position, and he is mostly known for his sculptures protesting against the war. This created many conflicts during the rise of the Nazi Party, when most of his works were confiscated as degenerate art. Stylistically, his literary and artistic work would fall between the categories of twentieth-century Realism and Expressionism.