Michael Sturm Gallery was founded in April 1996 in order to promote contemporary approaches to non-representational art. Within this field the gallery’s main focus is on new European and North-American tendencies in painting, sculpture, and installation work based on the traditions of constructivist, minimal and concrete art. Apart from geometric abstraction and its restatement by young post-minimalist and conceptual artists we also show experimental photography and a quite substantial range of what one may call organic abstraction as opposed to geometric.
The gallery’s particular passion is painting and colour in all their variety of aspects, starting with material-based monochrome artists like Marcia Hafif, up to colour as visual phenomenon like in the work of Bridget Riley and colour-based installations in space by artists such as Russell Maltz or Kirstin Arndt.
Apart from artists whom we represent directly, and sometimes even exclusively, there is a whole range of artists we do only represent indirectly but work together with on a regular basis. Among these are people like Finnbogi Petursson from Iceland, who represented his home country at the 2003 Venice Biennial, or the well-known British artist Roger Ackling. A detailed listing of all artists we have shown so far can be found at the end of these pages.
In order to achieve this cooperative work with other galleries is crucial. In the past we worked together with galleries i8 in Reykjavik, Markus Richter in Berlin, Zink & Gegner in Munich, Galerie Schlégl in Zurich, Galeria de arte Pilar Parra in Madrid, Vidal St. Phalle in Paris, the galleries James Hyman Fine Arts, Annely Juda und Karsten Schubert in London, and Green on Red Gallery in Dublin. Together we organize shows, share booths on certain art fairs and produce joint catalogues of our artists.
Apart from the usual gallery business we support museums and art institutions in planning shows, advise corporations and collectors as regards their collecting strategies and we are members of several organisations whose aim is to act as lobbies towards government authorities in order to promote art and issues of art business.
A big part of our success in promoting our artists depends on our attendance of important art fairs. Due to our highly specific programme it is even indispensable for us to achieve and to maintain a broad and international level.