Stefan Kumpfmüller

Childhood & Youth

I was born in Munich in 1964. For me, my parents moved from Munich-Haidhausen to Lohhof.1

I didn't like going to kindergarten, but then I had to go to primary school and made it to grammar school, which was luckily in Garching. I liked it better in Garching than in Lohhof.

Kropotkin

I am a child of the 80s. In the early 80s I discovered anarchism for myself in the Adalbert 14 bookshop in Munich. I was particularly taken with Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin2 and his work "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution"3 4 is a foundation of my view of humanity to this day.

Joe Strummer

With some delay, punk also came to Lohhof in 1980. Thomas Gottschalk had already done a special programme on "Pop nach 8" in 1977, but my brother convinced me that it wasn't music. So I listened to Sailor and the Wombles for a few more years until the first punk albums changed my life in 1980 with Stiff Little Fingers' "Nobody's Heroes" and The Clash's "London Calling". Joe Strummer5 became a great source of inspiration. Joe Strummer is credited with the quote "Thinking is what gets me out of bed in the mornings." The Clash were the band that realised early on that punk was not just about attacking the crusty rock establishment, but creating something new. The basis was, if you want to do it, do it.

Kurt Schwitters

I came into contact with Dadaism through punk. Like punk, dadaism was initially about tearing down established art forms, which always gets boring quickly. This was the reason for my enthusiasm for Kurt Schwitters6 . What excited me about Schwitters is his approach that art arises from valuation. What a liberation! He wrote: "What the material used meant before its use in the work of art is indifferent if it has only received its meaning in the work of art through valuation. ... Through valuation against each other, they lose their individual character, their inherent poison, are dematerialised and are material for the picture."7 "It is only important in the work of art that all parts relate to each other, arevalued against each other."

So I wrote my subject paper on Schwitters and in it I tried to prove that Kurt Schwitters was not a Dadaist, but the opposite, as he created his own art form.8

I was completely surprised by the end of my school days. But I now had my Abitur.

Career dreams

After school I would have liked to go to an art academy, but no one but me was really interested in that. Alternatives that combined this dream with a solid professional education were rejected by my parents as being in the way of my moving out of my parents' semi-detached house. So I moved out and moved to Munich.

Here I did a commercial apprenticeship and later turned my temporary job into my main job. The main job turned into a company shareholding. The prediction that starting a company would lead to a loss of friends did not come true, instead I married my best friend after 15 years of rehearsal.

I could also put my love of rules to good use in the company. Some people were not always as enthusiastic.

Now I was a part-time artist. Whereby there could be no question of acquisition here.

Part-time artist

Throughout my professional career I have always been artistically active, mostly in my head. I always refused to call this activity a hobby.

In the summer of 2013, I visited the exhibition "Mel Bochner: When the Colour Changes"9 . Here, the first exhibition of conceptual art "Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art"10 was re-enacted in New York in 1966. I was happy and understood for the first time what my brain was always thinking of: conceptual art.

Now I started making art more intentionally again.

I will keep at it.

My dream:

Artist

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