Martin Stommel (b.1969)  is a painter from Rhineland, who studied at the Academies of Munich and Berlin (UdK) in the 90s and began soon to take up mythological motifs, illustrated Dante and, especially in the 2000s, occupied himself intensively with ancient writings and modern art theory. At the same time the world of opera and later on the circus became a source of stimulation for him. In his aesthetics at the beginning of the 2010s, his expressive gesture based on nature, his urge to deal with and interpret traditions of thought and representation and his desire for purely painterly, beauty-seeking independence combine to form a simultaneously baroque and reductive pictorial conception. In the past decade, Stommel has increasingly commented on current social issues in the guise of archaic situations or myths. His works have been featured in exhibitions mainly in Germany, but also in Austria, France, Italy, Albania and Mexico.