The British artist and educator Andrew Stahl has died. Known for his own paintings in which disparate motifs orbit each other, Stahl proved an enduring influence of generations of artists as professor of fine art and head of undergraduate painting at the Slade in London.
‘My concept is no concept!,’ Stahl explained in 2023. ‘And then someone says, ‘what’s your research about?’ I know a research methodologist who says there are two types of research – research that goes around measuring everything, and then speculative research, which is a voyage into the unknown. And that’s what I feel my work is about.’
Travel and artist residencies provided much of his inspiration. His 2022 exhibition, The Sparkling City, at the Matdot Gallery in Bangkok was the fruit of a three month stay in Thailand. Cityscapes were rendered in primary colours and thickly applied paint, with elements such as shells and portraits appearing amidst the architecture. That show followed his 2019 retrospective at the Sharjah Art Foundation of work from 1976 onwards.
Other residencies include periods in Ethiopia, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, China, Italy, Australia and, with the Wingate scholarship in 1991, travel to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Myanmar. ‘What I like, is to be out of my comfort zone, and get plonked somewhere,’ he said.
He started teaching at the Slade in 1991 and ran the Transcultural Artist Network, a residency programme at the Slade initiated in 2008.
