Stefan Banz
° 1961
Lives in Cully (CH).
Stefan Banz is an artist, author, curator, and publisher. He grew up in Menznau, Switzerland. From 1982 to 1991 he studied art history, German literature and literary criticism at the University of Zürich. In 1989 he initiated and co-founded the first Kunsthalle Luzern and served as its artistic director until 1993. He was then artistic consultant to Iwan Wirth, and curator of the gallery Hauser & Wirth during its beginnings from July 1994 to December 1997. In 2005 he was curator of the Swiss Pavilion at the 51st Biennale in Venice. In 2009 he initiated the Association Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp (www.akmd.ch), and in 2010 he organized the international event Marcel Duchamp and the Forestay Waterfall in Cully. Since then he has been the artistic director of the KMD – Kunsthalle Marcel Duchamp | The Forestay Museum of Art, the world’s “smallest” museum. In 2016 his comprehensive publication Eilshemius: Peer of Poet-Painters won the Peter C. Rollins Book Award in New Mexico and the Eric Hoffer Book Award in New Jersey, and was nominated for the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature in Switzerland. As an artist he had many solo exhibitions, including: Migros Museum, Zürich; Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart; and Museum Schloss Moyland, Bedburg-Hau, Germany; In 2000 he received the Manor Art Prize, as well as the Recognition Award from the city of Lucerne. From 2004 to 2014 artistic collaborations with Caroline Bachmann. As an author he has written extensively about Marcel Duchamp, and Louis Michel Eilshemius, among many others.
