[1] He lives and works in New York City and Stone Ridge, NY[2] and is on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts MFA program.

This and the Whitney Biennial Exhibitions of 1971 and 1973 were followed by sufficient shows and reviews to prompt Roberta Smith in the New York Times to refer to his work as “among the most closely watched developments of the early ’70s.”[5] Exhibiting since the late 1960s, Stephan creates Postmodern art in the form of idiosyncraticly abstract paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, photography and video art.

Stephan builds paintings, abstract in form but pictorial in nature, with a few simple visual tools and colors, which he then uses to undermine a coherent view.

[9] Part of the power of Stephan’s paintings and drawings comes from their engagement with the architecture of their exhibition spaces in ways that mirror their formal structure.

[10] Because of their color and facture, some of Stephan’s paintings may seem austere, but merely apprehending their complex formal structure does not settle their meanings.