FREDERICK STEINMANN was born in Switzerland in 1953. At the age of seventeen, he enrolled in the School of Arts and Crafts in Vevey. Two years later, he left Switzerland for good and moved to Rome, where he studied at the Accademia delle Belle Arti from 1972 to 1978. At the end of 1978, he moved to Vienna, which he later left for one year to take in the euphoria of New York. In 1995, tired of the limitations imposed by geographical constraints, he returned to Switzerland, where he spent the following six months preparing his trip to Cairo, where he spent the following four years, his work imbued with Eastern mysticism. From Rome to New York and then on to Cairo, his travels have always taken him back to Vienna, where he currently lives and works. His exiles have had a strange influence on his work. He refines and plays with his materials, working the iron and wooden bases until they are smooth so that it becomes easier to apply the detailed, inevitable reality, which purports to be either cynical, greedy, sensual or simply animal-like, yet always with a poetic element. Frédérick Steinmann has gained the lucidity that comes from travelling.