Stereo Art

»What is it that makes an artist to deal with three-dimensional space, if he isnt a sculptor — unless he was an artist of magic?« (Achim Bahr: Ueber stereoskopische Malerei [On Stereoscopic Painting], Cat. Stereoskopie, Museum fuer Verkehr und Technik, Berlin 1989)

Painting in three dimensions means a specific challenge to an artist — not only in the sense of technical abilities because of necessary precision and meticulousness, but also in the conception of an art, that defines itself as visual search and aesthetical experiment and that not serves its purpose in the spatial effect.

The stereoscopic pictures on the next pages are painted with brushes, sprayed with an airbrush and calculated by a computer — among them the first 3D-conversion of a painting at all — Edward Hoppers renowned masterpiece Nighthawks of the year 1942 — and Starlight Express (2nd version), a series of four paintings of flying railway trains, inspired by the rousing Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber musical.