His father, Hugo, was a decorative painter. He attended the local Arts and Crafts school and honed his skills by making copies of old paintings. In 1909, he passed the entrance examination at the
Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, and was assigned to the drawing class of
Heinrich Knirr. That summer, he spent some time with
Hans von Hayek at his art school in
Dachau. Both Von Hayek and Knirr recommended that he leave Munich to study with
Christian Landenberger in
Stuttgart. In 1910, he enrolled at the
State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. After a year of study with Landenberger, he took
composition classes from
Adolf Hölzel, whose teaching methods differed from anything he had experienced before; treating art as a type of science. In 1912, he became one of Hölzel's master pupils at his studio in the garden of
Stuttgart Castle. Later that year, he spent four weeks with his friends in Paris. In 1913, he was invited to exhibit at the first Expressionist art exhibition in
Dresden. That same year, Hölzel was able to secure him a position painting murals in the main lobby of the upcoming
Werkbund Exhibition, where he worked with
Oskar Schlemmer and
Willi Baumeister. The response to their work ranged from enthusiastic praise to categorical rejection. Following the outbreak of World War I, Stenner and Schlemmer volunteered and were assigned to Grenadier Regiment #119 ("Königin Olga"). After serving for two months on the
Western Front, the regiment was transferred to the
Eastern Front in
Poland, where he was killed during an attack on Iłów in
Sochaczew County in the
Masovian Voivodeship . Despite his short working life, he was able to create 280 paintings and over 1,500 drawings. In March, 2016, on the 125th anniversary of his birth, the Villa Weber in Bielefeld officially became the Hermann-Stenner-Haus museum. The core of the collection was provided by Hermann-Josef Bunte, a legal scholar and art collector. ==Selected paintings==