-- Gerd Stritzel, known for portraits that seek out faces overlooked by the global narrative, is preparing an exhibition that will bring together his "Rubbish Dancer" series and his first large-scale sculptures, built entirely from reclaimed ocean plastic. The venue and dates are still to be announced. It is the first time the artist will present the theme in three dimensions, moving a body of work about marine pollution off the wall and into the room.
The environmental strand of Stritzel's practice has already found an audience beyond the art world. He donated a painting on ocean plastic pollution to the Centre Scientifique de Monaco, and its President, Dr. Jean-Jacques Risso, wrote to thank him for "this beautiful and intense artwork, illustrating so well the presence of plastic waste in our oceans." Dr. Risso added that the painting hangs in his office while the Centre awaits its renovation and expansion.
A Dance Surrounded by Waste
"Rubbish Dancer" examines the fragile relationship between people, consumption and nature. The figure at its centre moves gracefully, almost weightlessly, and is nonetheless surrounded by waste, chiefly plastic carried in from the oceans. The dance becomes an image of adaptation and survival in an environment shaped by human hands, where plastic, once shorthand for progress and convenience, turns into the silent antagonist of human elegance.
Stritzel is careful about the register. The work, he says, is "not a moral indictment, but a poetic invitation to reflection." Beauty and destruction sit side by side in the same frame, and the viewer is asked to look more closely rather than to be lectured. The sculptures extend that logic: the material of the problem becomes the material of the work.
A Year Across Europe and Asia
The announcement follows an unusually dense 2026. In the spring, Stritzel's "Rituals" was shown in the Anima Mundi programme at Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello in Venice, from 20 May to 4 June, during the 61st Venice Biennale of Art. He exhibited at the Michael Cacoyannis Foundation in Athens from 17 to 23 April, took part in the Fiera Internazionale d'Arte di Venezia in late March, and opened the year at the Stadtbücherei Ravensburg. A working journey to Japan between 30 January and 28 February is expected to yield around twelve paintings. Further 2026 appearances are scheduled but not yet dated, among them the Centre Scientifique de Monaco, Open+Art and Kunstnacht in Ravensburg, Gallery T96, and a solo exhibition titled "Portrait der Kulturen."
The preceding year was similarly international: the International Culture and Arts Center in Chongqing, China, from 16 October to 16 November 2025, the solo show "Piccolo Verde" in Ravensburg through the end of that year, and the Artf3 fairs in Paris and Monaco. In 2024 his work was presented at SWISSARTEXPO in the SBB Event Hall of Zurich Central Station. This year the Japanese art magazine Aatonau devoted a feature to him under the title "Painting Humanity's Quiet Resonance."
From Stage Sets to Portraits
Born in Friedrichshafen in 1961, Stritzel grew up in an artist family; his father was a painter and sculptor. He studied art and graphic design in Stuttgart, then spent six formative years in the United States, building stage sets for the San Francisco Opera and Ballet and dioramas for the California Academy of Sciences — work that taught him atmosphere, rhythm and the discipline of telling a story in physical space. With his sister he still runs the "Art Studio" in Immenstaad, which designs immersive three-dimensional environments for amusement parks and leisure facilities.
Travel gradually moved his attention from environments to individuals. Nepal, Tanzania, China, New Zealand, Cambodia, Cuba, Doha, Sri Lanka, Bali, Costa Rica and Colombia have all produced cycles of work, with farmers, monks, refugees, street vendors and spiritual elders as his subjects. He paints in mixed media and acrylic, and works materials gathered on the road into the surface: handwritten notes, fragments of maps, symbolic objects that anchor the narrative instead of decorating it. Among the results are "Colombia Coffee" and "Costa Rica Coffee," painted on real coffee sacks mounted on wood. He names Anselm Kiefer as a reference for that material presence, though the temperature of his own work is warmer and closer to its subjects.
Faces That Carry Stories
"I paint people because they carry stories," Stritzel says, and the sentence works as a summary of the whole practice. He travels, in his words, "to see faces — faces that speak louder than words," faces that "bear traces of origin, pride, dignity, hope, and joy." What he looks for in each portrait is "the quiet truth that resides in a gaze — and the shared humanity that connects us all." He paints, he has said elsewhere, individuals whose presence often remains unheard in the global narrative, people whose dignity resonates not in loud declarations but in subtle emotional frequencies.
That attention has a practical side. "Kiatu" — Swahili for shoe — came out of an encounter with a young street vendor in Tanzania who sells used, recycled footwear, and grew into a campaign: Stritzel hand-paints and signs old shoes, with the proceeds going to the Berlin-based Shoeaid organisation, which collects and distributes footwear across Africa. The same impulse runs through the ocean plastic work. His art, as he puts it, "is not just meant to please; it is meant to touch, stir, and remind."
Seen together, the portraits and the coming sculptures describe a single line of thought: that what we discard and who we overlook are the same question asked twice. For inquiries, collaborations, and additional information, contact Gerd Stritzel via email at [email protected], visit the official website, or follow @stritzel.art on Instagram.
Contact Info:
Name: Gerd Stritzel
Email: Send Email
Organization: Gerd Stritzel Art Studio
Website: https://www.stritzel.art
Release ID: 89200588
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