The Austrian artist Oskar Stocker (b. 1956) lives and works in Graz. He has become known internationally through the exhibition Facing Nations, which consists of portraits of more than 120 people of various nationalities living in Graz; it was shown first in Graz itself, then in Vienna, and later culminated in 2010 with its display at the UN Headquarters in New York City. He has also regularly painted portraits of the guests of the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) TV program erLesen—with well over two hundred of these portraits today. An anniversary publication includes the faces of Peter Handke, Gert Voss, Christine Nöstlinger, Josef Haslinger, Marlene Streeruwitz, Robert Menasse, and Peter Simonischek, to name just a few.

“A century after the crisis of the portrait as an obligatory academic discipline, it will emerge once more as a possible subject,” writes the Cologne art historian and curator Guido Schlimbach in an essay on Stocker’s paintings. Schlimbach goes on: “Meanwhile, portrait painting has become a free form of art without any constraints of use or narcissistic obsession, thus bearing ample testimony to the identity and mood of today’s society. Oskar Stocker is one of its most authentic representatives.”