Stefan Plenkers

curriculum vitae

1945	born in Ebern near Bamberg
1961-1963	POS/EOS in Görlitz, high school graduation
	drawing classes at the adult education center in Görlitz
1963	rejection from the Berlin-Weißensee School of Art
1963-1965	apprenticeship as a typesetter at the VEB Graphische Werkstätten Görlitz / Zittau
1965-1966	part-time typesetter in the typography department at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst under Albert Kapr
1966-1967	military service in the NVA
1967-1972	studies at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts under Günter Horlbeck, Herbert Kunze and Gerhard Kettner
1971-1973	marriage to Zsuzsanna Szabó and birth of daughter Csilla
	Zsuzsanna and Csilla return to Hungary
1972-1975	freelance work in Bad Muskau and Cottbus
1975	since then freelance work in Dresden
1980-1982	master student at the Dresden University of Fine Arts under Gerhard Kettner
1988	trip to China
1989	study trip to France
	several months off work after severe traffic accident
	new artistic start after regaining his motor and cognitive skills
1991	first attempts at painting to help with psychological and physical healing, participation in an artists' symposium in Lapland
	encouraged to develop an own sign
1992	course instructor at the Summer Academy in Marburg for “Freie Malerei”
1994-1996	study trips to the USA, Venice and Sicily
1997	completion of the portfolio “Pillnitzer Elegien” with lithographs illustrating poems by Dieter Hoffmann, begun in 1987
1999	trip to China
2000-2002	trips to the south and north of Spain
	start of the “portrait phase”
2002	patenting of his sign as a protected trademark
2003	trip to China as part of a state delegation
2005	residence in India, boat trip via Iceland to the North Cape
2006	Dieter Berger and Steffen F. Schmid produce the film “Perlmuttlicht. Facetten aus dem Leben des Dresdner Malers Stefan Plenkers (geb. 1945)”
2011	honored with a retrospective of his work at the Städtische Galerie Dresden
2024	died in Kreischa

Stefan Plenkers' paintings were perceived as interpretations of the time in which they were created, and so they became part of complex discussions about the quality of the society in which they were created and the quality of art. It was essential that not only the human figure, but also the construction of the space and the objects in the space were interpreted as forms and signs of existence. Stefan Plenkers' artwork is always an interpretation of reality.

Dr. Gisbert Porstmann
Stefan Plenkers - Raum und Zeichen, Dresden: Städtische Galerie Dresden 2011

Stefan Plenkers' artwork has always followed the experience, the condensed impression that takes shape on the canvas. If we often understood the pictures as metaphors, they were a result of his own existence.

Matthias Flügge
Stefan Plenkers - Raum und Zeichen, Dresden: Städtische Galerie Dresden 2011

Stefan Plenkers has always been a wanderer between abstraction and figuration. The artist possesses the gift of finding striking abbreviations for his own compositions. The closer these relict-like allusions approach the state of non-objectivity, the more clearly the tendency towards ornamentation emerges. The artist uses black deliberately to emphasize the two-dimensional surface of his pictorial inventions. His motifs become pure signs, he himself becomes the master of writing.

Carolin Quermann
Stefan Plenkers - Raum und Zeichen, Dresden: Städtische Galerie Dresden 2011