XXI 40 116, 2021

Pierre Muckensturm   Master Artists

Pierre Muckensturm is a french abstract painter and print maker born in Strasbourg, currently living in Colmar. He studied at Louis Pasteur University in Strasbourg. He is searching for the symbol, the matter and the light in the dark and the silence. He loves the dark, but he loves it from a scientist's point of view. « It's substantive work: the research of non-colour ». Or the research of a material. He starts with figurative painting and discovers abstraction in 2004 through Le Corbusier.

This is what Pierre Muckensturm says about his paintings : « The canvas is not a support anymore. I work on what it undergoes ». The canvas becomes painting in the end, and the black allows the examination of its apparent silence. So the color is not interesting in this context. He is inspired by calmness, constancy and temporality. He meets Julius Bissier, whose work also brings tranquility.

And neither is the shape: « The cross is a meeting point. This is where it happens ». The cross and the black question the « the immensity, or not ». This is a question of weightlessness, « of acceptance of the imbalance ». Not a shape, event if it owes its symmetry and its relentless geometry to the Alsatian culture, so rigourous and so well-ordered.

In 2004, he starts working on large scales canvases with oil painting, mixing calmness and intensity, sometimes adding printmaking, therefore exploring time and perspective.