About Arno Stern

A Brief Biography

Arno Stern’s life and work are inextricably linked.

In 1946, at the age of 22, he entered an institution for war orphans. He got the children painting, and immediately understood the primordial role of the play inspired by this activity, for which he created an original environment.

He then established a studio in Paris (in Saint-Germain-des-Prés). It became famous in the 1950s as l’Académie du Jeudi (The Thursday Academy) and operated there for 33 years before moving to the neighborhood of the Madeleine in 1987.

Arno Stern’s spectacular achievements have been widely featured by the media.

Arno Stern has participated in conferences in many cities, including Berkeley, Barcelona, Trevise, and Ravenna. In Bristol he served as a technical expert for UNESCO. He has given countless lectures and courses at universities, museums, teachers’ colleges, and cultural centers.

He has established studios in hospitals and has trained practitioners who have created them in pediatric medical centers, schools, social centers, and cultural institutions.

For 10 years the City of Paris has provided him with premises in which he founded the School for Practitioners of Creative Education, which welcomes students from countries around the world. He has also given training courses in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic, Spain, Venezuela, and Canada.

Arno Stern’s life and work are inextricably linked.

In 1946, at the age of 22, he entered an institution for war orphans. He got the children painting, and immediately understood the primordial role of the play inspired by this activity, for which he created an original environment.

He then established a studio in Paris (in Saint-Germain-des-Prés). It became famous in the 1950s as l’Académie du Jeudi (The Thursday Academy) and operated there for 33 years before moving to the neighborhood of the Madeleine in 1987.

Arno Stern’s spectacular achievements have been widely featured by the media.

Arno Stern has participated in conferences in many cities, including Berkeley, Barcelona, Trevise, and Ravenna. In Bristol he served as a technical expert for UNESCO. He has given countless lectures and courses at universities, museums, teachers’ colleges, and cultural centers.

He has established studios in hospitals and has trained practitioners who have created them in pediatric medical centers, schools, social centers, and cultural institutions.

For 10 years the City of Paris has provided him with premises in which he founded the School for Practitioners of Creative Education, which welcomes students from countries around the world. He has also given training courses in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic, Spain, Venezuela, and Canada.

An attentive witness to the manifestation aroused in the exceptional conditions of the Closlieu (the name given to the studio, which also serves as an ideal research laboratory), Arno Stern discovered Formulation. He explored it and understood its workings, but has never allowed himself to attempt to interpret it.

He extended his field of study through stays with indigenous peoples in Mauritania, Peru, Niger, Mexico, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Guatemala, and New Guinea.

He founded a new scientific domain, Expression Semiology, or the semiology of expression, and gave it a framework through the creation of R.I.S.E. (The Research Institute for the Semiology of Expression) in 1987.

Several hundred practitioners have been trained by Arno Stern. Many others have benefited, directly or indirectly, from his discoveries. Arno Stern’s message beckons all those who believe in the unexplored qualities of human beings, qualities to which an experience stripped of artifice can give natural and regenerative expression and a creative attitude in life.

Arno Stern’s work is well-known in the world of pedagogy. Yet, as is proven by the discussions that follow each of his public lectures, it answers more widespread questioning and expectations that have become increasingly insistent at this turning point in the evolution of our society.

Arno Stern’s discoveries highlight the existence of a primordial display that, due to lack of recognition, is in serious danger of extinction. Arno Stern proposes the salvation of heretofore-ignored natural human faculties.

Quotes about Arno Stern's work

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[His discoveries] make Arno Stern a semiologist coupled with an ethnologist - arguably one of our last great explorers - with whose name the history we teach must now reckon.

Jamil Jean-Marc DakhliaPresident of the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle
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Arno Stern provides the only tangible proof that the notion of human races does not exist

Albert Jacquarddirector of the National Institute of Demographic Studies
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Arno Stern is a very great scientist, one of the greatest scientists I know, because he has done precisely what science is all about. He didn't believe what others believed, he has discovered something others didn't even have the idea one could look for

Prof. Dr. Gerald HütherNational Library of Vienna
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I am convinced that Arno Stern's work currently represents the most promising avenue for studying play from a primal health research perspective. In terms of potential for research, Arno Stern's work is unique.

Dr. Michel OdentDo we need midwives?
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Just as Newton created an instrument and discovered a science, so Arno Stern is both the discoverer of a new field of science and the inventor of the tool in which this previously unknown manifestation can be seen. And just as the discovery of the laws of gravity in conjunction with the invention of the telescope profoundly altered our understanding of the universe, the development of the Closlieu and the discovery of the Formulation have completely changed how we approach education, childhood and, more broadly, our human condition.

André Stern

Several dates

The milestones of Arno Stern's work

Arno Stern’s first position in an OSE children's home
Arno Stern creates and implements of the Closlieu and the Table-Palette. This is the most famous "children's painting studio" in the world. Arno Stern is asked by Professors Heuyer, Lebovici, Delay and Volmat to install and operate this device in the hospitals of La Pitié-Salpétrière and Sainte-Anne. Arno Stern is appointed as a UNESCO expert.
First discoveries and research related to the Semiology of Expression. Arno Stern opens, with the support of the City of Paris, the EPREC (School for Creative Education Practitioners).
Arno Stern travels to the most remote regions of the world, to meet the last of the populations untouched by Western civilization, in order to let them paint for the first time and collect their traces.
Discoveries of the very beginning of the Human Trace thanks to the contributions of the one who will become his wife, Michèle Stern.
Arno Stern's discoveries lead to a completely new attitude towards children. Arno and Michèle Stern, even before the recent discoveries in neurobiology, developmental psychology, attachment theory, etc., implement this attitude of trust in human spontaneous dispositions: their children, André and Eléonore, grow up in this environment.
Arno Stern creates the Arno Stern Institute for Research in Semiology of Expression I.R.S.E.A.S.
Finalization of the vocabulary specific to the Semiology of Expression: Closlieu (TM), Play of Painting (TM), Formulation (TM). Implementation of the premises allowing for the documents accumulated during the last decades to be stored and studied, as well as the reception of scientific committees and training courses. Eléonore and André Stern become Arno Stern's main collaborators. Digitization of the archives, which had previously been kept in slide form.
Switch to digital technology. Acquisition of specific equipment to digitize, process and index the 500,000 archived documents. Arno Stern is constantly updating and adapting to technical progress his training program for the profession Play of Painting Servant.
Broad scientific convergence work led by Arno Stern, André Stern and the I.R.S.E.A.S. Use of digital material to restructure and deepen the didactic tools for the training courses. The I.R.S.E.A.S. becomes the sole depository of the documentation, archives and didactic material created by Arno Stern and his collaborators.

Throughout these years, Arno Stern(TM) has never ceased to publish numerous books (translated into various languages). At the same time, he has carried out intensive communication work through lectures, participation in conferences and seminars, and countless interviews. And he has never missed a session of the Play of Painting in his Parisian Closlieu.