Born in Germany (*1940 in Templin), he has lived and worked in Caracas/Venezuela since 1974, where he died on October 23, 2019. His last exhibition took place under the heading "The Dignity of Silence" in the Eine Art Galerie in Cologne.

Jorge Stever, painter and sculptor as he is often described, is one of our best-known plastic artists, pontor and sculptor, having completed his studies in philosophy and art history in Frankfurt and Munich (Germany). In 1972 he took part in the "Documenta 5" (Kassel, Germany) and exhibited in 1973 in the Darmstadt Museum and in the Kunsthalle in Cologne, in the Museum of Modern Art in Helsinki, in the Museum of Modern Art in Stockholm and in the Weingarten Gallery in Stockholm with Jasper Johns. That year he lived in Venezuela and has been exhibiting as a Venezuelan artist ever since. His work is related to lyrical abstraction or new realism, with clear informalist influences. He has been featured in numerous publications in Europe and America as one of the forerunners of hyperrealism.

In 1974 he exhibited again at the Weingarten gallery in Stockholm together with Lynn Chadwick and at the Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, where he received the National Painting Prize that year. He also takes part in the III. Triennial of New Delhi (India), where he receives the gold medal. He stayed away from the art market for some time, but after years of research he exhibited in 1989 at the Galería Garcés/Velásquez (Bogotá) and in the Sala RG. For Susana Benko, this artist's work is "a solid piece of work because it is the result of a continuous, daily, solitary investigation. For Stever, penetrating the darkness is also not new.

Years ago, chromatic sobriety was present in his works. Then it was the white period and at another time he explored color. But none of these phases interrupt each other. They have a logic and they show a coherent plastic thought" (1989). In 1990 he took part in the collective "New Abstract Painting. Ocho planteamientos" (Walk through the Museo Soto, the Museo Francisco Narváez and the Sala RG) and " Lot 80. Panorama of the fine arts in Venezuela" (GAN). Stevers` work has as its main feature a dense, dark and very pigmented atmosphere. Roberto Guevara has said of his painting that it has a brilliant and unique aura, which in recent times has been oriented towards opaque, almost monochromatic textures. Although his work was previously more identified with pictorial technique, it was his sculpture that distinguished him in the early 1990s. In this context, the artist himself said that it is the beginning of everything, because this branch of art has a "mystical charge". According to Jesús Fuenmayor, they are "sculptural segments in which the artist expresses his intuitive way of perceiving things".

Moving from historically charged pre-Columbian symbols to working with mundane references, Jorge Stever evoked irony and contradiction in his painting" (Monsalve, 1991).

Exhibitions (selection)