"THE STUDIO became for Ion Stendl a theme that often fascinated
him and made him pick up the brush or the pencil. He is continuing
a honourable tradition, that reinstalled itself with the new art of the
Renaisance, as the artists added to their preocupations the study
of their handcraft and the self reflection. In our century artists like
Picasso (who often followed the relation between artist and his model),
and Braque (with his large STUDIO series), showed us that art itself
can become a new subject for artworks.


Model in Studio - 1999

Therefore the studio is for Ion Stendl not only a place where images
and objects are created, but also a world, a very personal one, which
can also be shared with the viewer. The studio is not only a room
filled with an easel, painting tools and colours but also a synthesis
of themes, models, image fragments and image ideas, that followed
and fascinated the artist over the years. All these motifs are reflecting
a fragment of time, of existence. Ion Stendl is painting the place where
his daily existence takes place and captures simultaneously the
streaming of time.

In Ion Stendl's studio the model, the feminine nude represents the
expression of sensuality and vitality. As an opposition to the pronounced
sugestive forms of the feminine body we find the classical balance of
the chariot driver from Delphi, in his long chiton, one of the few greek
bronze statues of the fifth century for Christ, that remained preserved
untill now. (...)

Stillness and dynamism, life signs and lifeless objects alternate in
Ion Stendl's studio. Between them, the viewer frequently discovers the
MELANCHOLY, the famous image by Dürer that he often quoted in his
recent works.

(By Rohtraut Wittstock, Bucharest 1996)