Biography

Stefan Strumbel is a contemporary German artist best known for his provocative work involving cuckoo clocks, crucifixes, and anchors—folkloric objects associated with his homeland of Germany’s Black Forest. Born on May 17, 1989 in Offenburg, Germany, he began his career as a street artist, spray-painting graffiti onto walls and trains, leading to his arrest for vandalism in 1996. By 2005, he began to focus on buying cuckoo clocks to use as material for his expanding art practice. “I started thinking that graffiti itself was more of a New York thing,” Stumbel explained, “and that I should do something that was authentic to where I come from, the Black Forest.” Often featuring dripping blood, skulls, and other punk imagery, Strumbel’s sculptures function as a challenge to traditional values and clichéd notions of patriotism. In 2011, the artist embarked on a large-scale installation of his work, building a full-size replica of the interior of a catholic church located in Goldscheuer in the Upper Rhine Valley, including a graphic, black-and-white six-foot Madonna and child. Strumbel lives and works in Offenburg, Germany.