Stefan Zsaitsits is an Austrian artist, and from looking at his website it seems as though he's been working since about 2007, when he did a lot of painting. Since then he seems to have gone off painting, and for the last 3/4 years he's been focusing on drawing, mainly just with graphite pencil. His surreal drawings were described on Colossol as depicting 'an individual who is literally or figuratively encumbered by animals, objects, or metaphorical thoughts'. I think that's a very nice way to put them. In terms of my own opinion, I particularly like the layering in his work - I always find it difficult to create enough tone and depth to works in graphite/grey lead, but he's tackled that problem very well by using the thin, un-concrete nature of the medium softly and carefully in just the right parts. I also like and the sketchy aesthetic (though it's still very controlled at the same time).
I think his drawing works are a lot stronger than his earlier paintings. His style appears more developed and his drawings are a lot more refined these days. In the painting works I think it was a little more obvious who his influences were, and now he's realised how much more of his own personality and ideas he can put into the work, and taken the work away from direct surrealist influences. I guess that comes with time too. But perhaps I'm just jumping to conclusions. I guess it's easy to categorise artists and assume things about their influences, but here's a work by Dali that I thought of when I saw Stefan's early paintings (I think it's called 'Venus with drawers'):
I think his drawing works are a lot stronger than his earlier paintings. His style appears more developed and his drawings are a lot more refined these days. In the painting works I think it was a little more obvious who his influences were, and now he's realised how much more of his own personality and ideas he can put into the work, and taken the work away from direct surrealist influences. I guess that comes with time too. But perhaps I'm just jumping to conclusions. I guess it's easy to categorise artists and assume things about their influences, but here's a work by Dali that I thought of when I saw Stefan's early paintings (I think it's called 'Venus with drawers'):
and here's some of Zsaitsit's early work:
I guess you can't really just say that if there's drawers and bright colours it's obviously Dali/surrealist influenced though, and that's not really a bad thing either anyway. There's always going to be someone out there doing something really similar to what someone's done in the past. I'm guilty of that myself. I'll probably go home and do something really similar to Zsaitsits unintentionally in the future now. Plus, maybe he was just reading a lot about alice in wonderland and climbing into furniture or something. Or maybe he just liked all that stuff and wanted to try it out? I shouldn't be putting people in drawers and filing them under categories. Plus, I'm 17. What the hell do I know? So just ignore all that. Anyway. This is such a crap post. I'm talking shit now. What I'm trying to say is Zsaitsit's has improved since he first started and now he does some very impressive uniquely stylized drawings. This is one of my favourites:
Here's his website.
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