Stefan Szczesny

Stefan Szczesny (born 9 April 1951) is a German painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. He is one of the most recognized figures in Twenty First-century art, co-founding the "Junge Wilde" movement. Among his most famous works are the Mainau Island (2007) and his The Living Planet for the Expo 2000.

Mustique (2002)
ISBN 3-8238-5591-3


 * A painting grows like a plant. Use all colours, all shapes. Everything that attracts and excites me is a part of me. Painting is about proportions, relationships which breathe life. "Painting is a harmony which runs parallel to nature".


 * Everything is love. "HEAVEN ON EARTH" our idea of heaven has been formed by painting and nothing else. I love pure, bright colours, their intellectual clarity of expression conveying nothing but feeling. Painting - the inspired animation of the surface.


 * Light, colour, love - let me come under your spell. Life can be represented only by a lively kind of painting. There is clarity in passion.


 * The power of memory - magic- myth - abstract beauty. I paint pictures that have never been seen before. Visions of another world. At once sensuous and intellectual.


 * As a means of expression, painting must deliver universally valid statements, make allegorical reflections on life, and create new mythologies.


 * Paintings are complex puzzles in the twilight world between abstraction and figuration. I use the medium in a simple, unsophisticated way to express what I don't see expressed anywhere else.


 * What is the secret behind the emotional effect of great works of painting? What laws govern their beauty? Delacroix said that being a feast for the eyes is the prime merit of a good painting. I seek the timeless, the quintessential in painting.

oh, would you like to come with me, down to my garden, by the sea, far, far away in Caribbee? Where the sun beats down from a turquoise sky and hammerhead clouds go sailing by; where the tor...toi...es...plod...oh...so...slow and humming birds flash to and fro Through the lily ponds and the waterfalls, and lizards bask on sun-baked walls under the giant ficus tree- here in my garden by the sea. Where fireflies dance in whirling flights beneath the palms on moonlit nights, in the scent of the frangipani flowers; where tree-frogs whistle in the ww-wee hours to the hiss of the waves as they come and go, and the boats rock, moored, in the bay below, rocking, rocking, silently- beneath my garden, by the sea. Let's run away, just you and me, down to my garden by the sea, far, far away in Caribbee! Felix Dennis, January 6, 2001
 * My garden, by the sea