The Stencilman produces art with the symbols of drawing stencils, made for children. These stencils are available commercially and were produced since the late 19th century. Their time of prosperity were in the '70s as modern toy, made out of plastic.

Meanwhile the collection includes over 3000 different stencils from every period: From the first stencils of the Imperial Era, made out of cardboard, to the very modern form of stencil-books [more].

The Stencilman was founded 1995 in Hamburg/Germany by Konstantin Voit. At the annually exhibition of the Art College Hamburg the first block of Stencilman was shown in summer 1996 [Photo].

Over the years some ideas from the Pattern Block (Block 1) were taken up and developed to ten blocks since now. Each block includes 32 to 108 pictures. In early blocks the size of a single picture was DIN A4 or DIN A3, but over the years size rised up to DIN A1 and DIN A0. Newest trend is the large size format (240 x 170 cm), which is made no longer with spray paint, but with acrylic and oil on canvas.

The Stencilman uses the stencils as filter in front of the varying possibilities of imaging the world. The artist who is using this kind of language so no longer ask "What should I image?", but "What should I do with all this preformed images?".

Image: ALPHA, DIN A4, Oil/Spray paint on canvas, 1995 (the very first painting of The Stencilman)
Rollover: Variation of ALPHA, DIN A4, Oil/Spray paint on canvas, 1997