STEFAN AMPENBERGER (1908 – 1983)

BIOGRAPHY

Stefan Ampenberger was born in Munich, Germany and began painting in Bavaria as a youth. Adventurous and restless, he travelled widely on foot and by sea until moving to South Africa in 1926. In the 1930s, he met and was mentored by artist John Henry Amshewitz in Johannesburg.

Ampenberger married fellow artist Iris Ampenberger and they travelled South Africa together in a caravan for 17 years, sketching and exhibiting. In 1964, they settled in Thaba ‘Nchu, in the Free State. He became a member of the Bloemfontein Group and occasionally exhibited with them. He also frequently exhibited alongside his wife.

Ampenberger’s travels influenced his artistic output, and he is well known for his landscapes. Occasionally figures intrude into the scene, but they are incidental to the sweeping rhythms of clustered vegetation and the geophysical formation of the land. His technique is bold. Paint is applied in broad, juicy strokes and natural features are casually defined. There is a kind of restless, expressionist bravura about Ampenberger’s paintings and an absence of detail, which stamps then as Modern. During the early 1970s, the browns and greens of Ampenberger’s former canvases gave way to intensified chromatic colour.

SOURCES
‘Stefan Ampenberger’, Strauss & co., https://www.straussart.co.za/artists/stefan-ampenberger.
Berman, Esmé. Art & Artists of South Africa, AA Balkema: Cape Town, 1983.