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