Peter Stämpfli
Born in 1937.
Died in 2022.
Peter Stämpfli (born 1937) is a Swiss artist associated with Pop Art. In the mid-1960s, he produced paintings that took up everyday objects from consumer society, enlarging them and treating them as autonomous motifs. The painting Proud Beauty (1963) forms part of this enquiry: a white background, a monumental object and bold colours inspired by advertising imagery.
In a later series, he turned his attention to the automobile, and subsequently to the tyre and its tread. Enlarging the motif transforms an industrial detail into an abstract, almost sculptural image.
Stämpfli belongs to a generation of Swiss artists who appropriated forms from contemporary visual culture and reinterpreted them in a local context. The Kunstmuseum Thun and the Aargauer Kunsthaus have presented him in exhibitions devoted to Swiss Pop Art, alongside works by several artists of his generation. The Fundació Stämpfli in Sitges presents a selection of his work and traces the development of his artistic enquiry, from paintings of everyday objects to monumental compositions inspired by the tyre.
