S 37. 1980. Print on vinyl

Between November 26, 1980 and January 11, 1981, Peter Stämpfli was invited to a solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. There he presented S 37, a work created especially for that show.

The letter S was the initial of Stämpfli. The number 37 was the final part of the year of his birth. On February 10, 1990, the work S 37 was burned in a fire that devastated the artist’s studio, destroying a total of more than one hundred works.

The imprint of the tire had appeared for the first time in Peter Stämpfli’s work in 1970, on the floor of the Galerie Rive Droite in Paris. Between 1970 and 1975, he exhibited others in large rooms of the 7th Paris Biennale, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and the Musée Galliera in Paris, faithfully simulating a long path along the floor or wall leading to the large painted and displayed tire.

Since 1974, Peter Stämpfli’s painting has focused exclusively on abstraction derived from isolating the geometric forms of the tire. Now, in this exhibition, the Fondation Stämpfli is proud to present the reconstruction of a new vision of S 37. His last work completed in life, made during December 2025 expressly for the Foundation that bears his name.