ANDRÉ STEMPFEL
The Merchant House, Your House
12 December 2025 – 28 February 2026
A distinguished French artist, an undisputed authority on the monochrome, a hands-on inventor, ANDRÉ STEMPFEL (1930) has undoubtedly given us new proof of the monochrome’s longevity and artistic force. The Merchant House (TMH) is honored to present a special exhibition of his medium-defining and -defying body of work. Stempfel’s timeless geometries in radiant yellow—his “yellow monochromes”—enter a lived-in environment, but only to decontextualize. Ludic, acrobatic, spectacular, they unsettle common viewpoints.
Now ninety-five, Stempfel remains at the height of his pursuit, true to his self-described, open-ended program of “destruction-metamorphosis”: “iconoclastic (and euphoric),” intent on “raising havoc” in a “space of introspection.”
OPENING
Sat 13 Dec, 18:00-20:00
With the artist
TMH SCREENING & TALK
Fri 23 Jan, 18:00-20:00
With Elâ Atakan and Marsha Plotnitsky
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Stempfel’s work insists on contingency and participation. TMH, in response, transforms its very appearance for this exhibition. Sofas, chairs, cabinets, and lamps are brought in, inviting everyone to linger, lounge, and mingle in the company of the artworks. Miroir morceau choisi (1984), le président (1986), ligne hors texte (1989), retourné (1998), sooth (2006), rou-lé (2017), où?, quoi? (2020), and vloop (2023) are highlighted among other emblematic hybrid pieces.
In the light cast by the yellow geometric figures, set loose to roam in frivolity, geometry reasserts its fluid, defining power: reframing, or even reclaiming, ordinary objects in terms of the objects of geometry—lines, shapes, and their rhythms. And what of the functionality, the instrumentality, of furnishings?
A strictly logical view of the world is thrown into question, and with it, the models that govern our orientation in it. Stempfel’s objects, taking center stage, draw us in with communal humor, with a joy that sustains art—and sustains us with art.
This exhibition draws on Founding Artistic Director Marsha Plotnitsky’s essay on Stempfel in the TMH catalogue Consequences III, extending the gallery’s dialogue with Stempfel’s work.
BIOGRAPHY
André Stempfel (1930, FR/CH) is known as an iconoclastic reinterpreter of geometric abstraction. After he lost his works in a fire in 1970, his practice centered on the visual language of the monochrome, primarily in yellow, and he extended his work to urban sculpture. Stempfel was already a determined painter at the age of 10 and chose art as his métier at the age of 17. He has been part of the international art scene from the late 1960s, showing in museums and galleries in Paris and abroad, and becoming an honorary member of the international MADI movement in 1989.
His works are part of important collections such as that of the Pompidou Center and Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (FR), the Mondrian House in Amersfoort (NL), the Mathematics Museum (Arithmeum) in Bonn (DE), Satoru Sato Museum (JP), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Museum Ritter (DE), and Museum of Geometric and MADI Art, Dallas (USA), among others. The Merchant House highlighted his work at Art Rotterdam, in the group show The Indispensable Experience of Art in 2021, the solo show An Amsterdam Retrospective in 2023, and in a special group presentation at PAN Amsterdam in 2023. In Paris, he is represented by Galerie Lahumière and has regularly been showcased in their shows of geometric abstraction, including at Art Paris 2022 and as part of their Motionless Mobility survey, 2023. His works were shown at important art fairs such as Art Basel, Art Cologne, FIAC, and Art Paris. Stempfel lives and works in Paris, where he shares his studio with his wife, the poet Evelyne Wilhelm, who collaborates with him on his artist’s books.