The visitor
Peter Stämpfli
Self-portrait in raglan
Self-portrait with raincoat
Paris, 1963
Oil on canvas
Peter Stämpfli is a Swiss artist rooted in Paris and has a close relationship with Sitges since 1971, where he created the Stämpfli-Contemporary Art Foundation with a collection of works from the 1960s to the present.
Self-portrait with raincoat corresponds to the period between 1963 and 1970 in which Stämpfli painted a series of works thought as a dictionary of trivial gestures and objects of everyday life urban life. As can be seen in Room A of the Stámpfli Foundation, the works of this period recover an unrealistic figuration, in which a minimalist essence of the object or gesture is represented, trimmed on a monochrome almost white outside any context.
It is part of the concern of young artists of the 60's. XX to leave behind post-war abstract painting and create a new figuration linked to everyday life, popular culture and the new languages of visual communication such as advertising, comics and movies. It's remarkable the decision of Stämpfli to take this step forward without abandoning the traditional technique of oil painting on canvas is noteworthy.
The work was exhibited for the first time at the 3rd Paris Biennale in 1963 at the Museum of Modern Art of La Ville in Paris with two other works, by the Federal Commission of Culture of the Swiss Confederation to represent their country at the Biennial.