Wolfgang Eberhard Stoerchle^[1] (born Störchle; January 17, 1944 – March 14, 1976) was a German-American conceptual artist known for influential performance and video works made in Southern California in the 1970s.^[2]

Stoerchle was born in Titisee-Neustadt, Germany, during World War II. He moved with his family to Toronto, Ontario, Canada as a teenager in 1959. In 1962, he spent ten months riding through the United States on horseback with his brother, Peter, arriving in Los Angeles and living there in 1963–64.^[3]

He went to college at the University of Oklahoma from 1964 to 1968 and began graduate work at the University of California, Santa Barbara, earning an M.F.A. in 1968.^[3] He became a naturalized citizen in Oklahoma.^[1] During this time he performed in California with fellow artists Miles Varner and Daniel Lentz in a group called California Time Machine.^[4]

In 1970, he began teaching in the Post-Studio Art program at California Institute of the Arts, where his fellow instructors included Allan Kaprow and Nam June Paik.^[3] His teaching assistant was Jack Goldstein.^[5]

In 1972, Stoerchle made a controversial performance at the Pomona College Museum of Art in which he urinated on a rug in the gallery.^[6] Backlash to the performance from the college's more socially conservative administration led to a mass resignation of the art faculty.^[6]

Stoerchle moved to New Mexico in the fall of 1975. He died six months later after a car accident, age 32. He was survived by his wife, Carol.^[7]

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