The Sculpture Trail benefits from the generous support of the City of Luxembourg.
Stefan Strumbel
The Owl, 2025 Bronze, 200 x 220 cm
Location
Roundabout Robert Schuman, L-2525 Luxembourg
Art Walk Challenge
The Owl
In the public space of Luxembourg, it stands both calmly and vigilantly: a monumental bronze owl, enthroned upon a pine cone. Yet this is more than a natural motif – it carries the weight of a traditional cuckoo clock. With it, Stefan Strumbel not only brings a powerful symbol of home and origin into the city, but also a precise metaphor for the passing of time. The owl, an enduring symbol of wisdom, night, and hidden sight, gazes out over a world in upheaval. In times of global uncertainty, political conflict, and social transformation, it becomes a silent witness to darker moments. The cuckoo clock weight beneath it recalls cyclical processes, the ticking of history – and what we may have forgotten. Strumbel, who grew up in Germany’s Black Forest, interweaves personal identity with collective memory. His owl brings a fragment of Central European culture into a place defined by internationalism, political significance, and cultural diversity. In Luxembourg – between finance, European integration, and historic fractures – the work takes on new meaning: as confrontation, as rupture, as invitation. The Owl offers no answer. It observes – quietly, vigilantly, unobtrusively. A symbol of presence and remembrance, of loss and hope. A weight not that pulls, but that steadies.
Stefan Strumbel (b. 1979, Offenburg) is an artist whose work consistently explores the concept and construction of home. Without a classical academic background, he developed his own artistic language early on, which is characterised by a pointed examination of cultural symbols, collective memory and social narratives. Since the early 2000s, Strumbel has been developing sculptures, installations and paintings in which he deals with questions of identity, belonging and the understanding of tradition. In doing so, he deliberately focuses on the tension between the familiar and the alienated - and reveals the contradictions of a concept of home that is at once emotionally charged, politically contested and historically charged. His works have been shown in numerous institutional exhibitions, including major solo exhibitions in Germany and abroad. Stefan Strumbel lives and works in Offenburg
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