German artist Stefan Guido Schmidt has been known for over twenty years for his sensual black-and-white photography, featured in numerous interviews and publications in leading art magazines. Yet it is difficult to define the artist through a single medium alone. His creative talents are as diverse as his career: graphic designer, illustrator, art director, designer, musician, photographer, and video artist.
In 2001, he turned his back on the advertising industry. As co-founder of the art nightclub RANGAVILAS in Hamburg, he finally brought together all of his creative disciplines. For six months, he transformed an old tobacco warehouse in Hamburg’s Speicherstadt—today the site of the Elbphilharmonie—into a succession of immersive worlds through photography, installations, and video art.
In 2002, he embarked on a year-long journey around the world, creating a remarkable portfolio of photographs and artistic projects along the way. Upon returning to Germany, he continued working as a photographer while also developing creative concepts for events and planning his own exhibitions.
After spending fifteen years in Berlin, Germany’s creative capital, Schmidt fell in love with Greece and moved to the island of Aegina, near Athens, where he lived for five years. Inspired by the island’s unique light, he returned to drawing and painting after a long hiatus, while continuing his work in photography and video art.
This year is particularly special for the artist, as he is exhibiting on his beloved island of Kythera not once, but twice. The first exhibition, held at the Follow Your Art Gallery in Kapsali, showcases, for the very first time, drawings and visual impressions created largely on the island over the past two years, serving as a tribute to Kythera’s distinctive beauty.
The title You Burned My Tears reflects his profound emotional connection to, and enduring love for, Greece. Visitors will encounter mixed-media works and abstract digital collages alongside drawings executed in charcoal, ink, and pencil. Together, these works reveal an artist driven by curiosity, experimentation, and a deep sensitivity to place, memory, and emotion.
For his second exhibition, The Beautiful Mind, running from 25 to 31 July, the artist presents a series of previously unpublished black-and-white analogue photographs taken during his travels between 2002 and 2015. The exhibition is hosted in Mercato, Chora of Kythera.
Visitors may also have the opportunity to view his first short film, GHOSTS (14 min), produced in 2022. Widely regarded as one of his most poetic works, the film has since been screened as part of various exhibitions.
The breadth of Schmidt’s creative output may surprise—or even bewilder—some viewers. Yet for an artist who thinks across disciplines and media, it is entirely natural that each vision should find expression through its own most appropriate language. Consequently, his body of work encompasses a rich diversity of styles, materials, and genres.
