Stefan Rinck
Stefan Rinck (born 1973) is a German visual artist who works mainly in sculpture. He lives and works in Berlin.
Rinck grew up in Zweibrücken in an artistic family. His father, Norbert Rinck, was an educator and draftsperson; his mother, Ute Rinck, is a painter and art teacher; his sister Monika Rinck is a writer. Before becoming an artist, Rinck trained as a stonemason. He studied art history and philosophy at Saarland University and then sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe with Stephan Balkenhol from 1996 to 2000.
He creates figurative stone sculptures using traditional direct-carving methods and works with sandstone, limestone, marble and diabase. His sources of inspiration include the French Romanesque period and popular culture like video games and comics. Rinck’s stone figures bring together characters, animals, monsters and hybrids, each carrying symbols from history, myths, religion and folklore, set in a contemporary context. His work often explores collective unconscious ideas.
As art critic Bazon Brock notes, Rinck uses recognizable figurative forms but speaks with his own language, and humor plays a big part in his work. The humor lightens the weight of the stone and helps viewers connect with deep ideas. Curator Daniel S. Palmer says Rinck’s sculptures have cross-cultural and cross-era appeal.
In 2019, Rinck was featured in the Thames & Hudson book 100 Sculptors of Tomorrow. A documentary called Heart of Stone by Sonja Baeger, about the making of three large Rinck sculptures, premiered in Berlin in 2021.
Rinck has created public sculptures since 2008. At the Busan Biennale in 2008, the granite piece The Division of Woman and Man was commissioned. In 2018, The Mongooses of Beauvais was permanently installed in Paris. Other large limestone works include One of those who were too long in the woods (Vent des Fôret, 2010) and Saint Georges et son dragon de compagnie (La Forêt d'Art Contemporain, 2020) in France. In November 2021, his sandstone sculpture Why I bear / Grosser Lastenbär was inaugurated at Zionskirchplatz in Berlin-Mitte.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 19:24 (CET).