An Espresso with Angela Stauber: Painter on Architecture, Space and Society
Published: March 22, 2025 | Interview by Romina Provenzi | 5 min read
Photo credit: Department für Öffentliche Erscheinungen
German contemporary painter Angela Stauber is redefining how we perceive architecture and space through her powerful oil paintings. Based in Munich, Stauber's work explores the intersection of physical and digital spaces, questioning access, perception, and societal structures in our contemporary world. In conversation for ‘An Espresso With…’, Stauber speaks about her artistic philosophy, her approach to painting as a female artist working with traditionally male-dominated themes, and her current projects examining public space and accessibility.
Defining Success as a Contemporary Artist
What does success mean to you as an artist?
Only the top of the iceberg is visible in the art world, although there is so much more happening underneath. Success is often defined in connection with what’s selling, the auction prices, and top exhibitions in established institutions. For me, success can be so many other things. It’s a success if those artists, whom I value and respect, know my work and value it positively and vice versa. It is also a success to have conversations and exchanges of a certain quality, connect with others, and show your work in an exhibition. It’s the absolute success in my eyes when an artist can constantly develop work up to the end of their life. It doesn’t always have to do with money.
Current Focus: Perception and Contemporary Painting
What is the focus of your work at present?
For a long time, I have been observing spaces in my work. Instead of just relying on observation, this very last year, I have been trying to find more associations, including feelings and memories, and depicting all this mixture of perceptions through a search for images that reflect them. Every period has its understanding of paintings in connection with what’s happening in society, and I am trying to find images that reflect our present time. We live in a digital space, we don’t spend a lot of time doing something physical, and we aren’t attached to nature either, compared to previous generations. All of this has the effect of changing our perceptions, which is the topic at the centre of my work right now, and I try to find images about it. I play around a lot with dimensions and love doing large paintings as they offer me two dimensions to work with, the physical and the non-physical world, and you can walk near or look from a distance. At present, the main question I am trying to answer with my work is about what we feel towards the world. But there’s the pressure to prove certain themes for female artists, with key players in the arts keen on exhibiting female artists whose work is related to problems or traumas they experienced in their lives. In the visual arts, we should reach a point where we all self-reflect on our situations. Many female artists are already self-reflecting on those issues in other ways, without making it the focus of their work, and I also don’t deal with these themes in my work as I explore other topics.
Architecture, Space, and Society in Painting
Is your work related to architecture and space?
Yes, you could say so about my art practice. The truth is that themes such as space and architecture, and a medium such as painting, have been traditionally explored by male artists. Certainly, I believe that these topics don’t fit into a system based on gender, as they apply to and touch every human being in society. In my work, I want to find out about structures in society in a different way than what others have done so far, as I want to see and represent them visually in my paintings. I am trying to find and paint visual forms about being held apart from something. Now I am working on projects in public spaces that I see as possibilities to show what can be accessed and what can’t. Of course, these are very political topics in our contemporary societies. They deal with space and access in terms of what you can or can’t enter in the public space.
Reflections on this interview
Angela Stauber's paintings challenge us to reconsider our relationship with space, both physical and digital, in an increasingly disconnected world. Her oil painting themes are access, perception, and the structures that shape our society. By working with such themes traditionally dominated by male artists, like architecture, space, and societal structures, Stauber brings a fresh contemporary perspective to painting in 2025. To explore more of Angela Stauber's work, visit her official website at angelastauber.de. Her upcoming projects in public spaces promise to further interrogate questions of accessibility and what it means to occupy shared spaces in our contemporary societies.
Hindurch . 2024 . 38 x 32 cm . oil on wood
Photo credit: Angela Stauber
Vor dir . 2023 . oil on canvas . 160 x 200 cm
Photo credit: Angela Stauber
