Strawalde (Jürgen Boettcher)
Anna Chron

16. September 2023 — 04. November 2023

Jürgen Boettcher (born 1931), who calls himself a painter from Strahwalde, the village of his childhood and youth in Upper Lusatia, is one of the great German artistic personalities of the past seven decades. His idiosyncratic painting style, which oscillates between abstraction, free gestures, figurative and surreal elements, tells the story of a poetic rebel who works unwaveringly on a multifaceted and impressive body of work.

Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Anna Chron (IV. 2023)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Ohne Titel (Kleine Abstraktion I)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Ohne Titel (Kleine Abstraktion II)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Anna Chron 17 (Ostern 2023)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Collage 30.IV.2023 (mit Bibelzitat aus der Pariser Bibel von 1815)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Kleine Kyoto Collage”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Märzbild”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Mädchen mit Vogelkäfig”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Anna Chr. (Mai 2023)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Ohne Titel (Oktober 2021)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Ohne Titel (Juli 2021)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Abstraktion (2019)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Anna Chron (Januar 2023)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Lichtung”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Collage 25.IV.2022”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Ohne Titel (22.IX.2022)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Ohne Titel (XI.2021)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Blaue Collage”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Anna Chr. (Oktober/November 2022)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Ohne Titel (Kleine Arabeske)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Ohne Titel (Chinesische Phantasie)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Ohne Titel (März 2022)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Ohne Titel (Chinesische Figurinen I)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Ohne Titel (Chinesische Figurinen II)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Ohne Titel (3.1.2020)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Anna Chr. (Juli)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Ohne Titel (18.I.2023) ”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Ohne Titel (16.III.2023) ”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Ohne Titel (3.VII.2023)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Aufsteigend ”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Rote Collage (17.VI.2023)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Anna Chron (Februar 2023)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Collage 1.V.2022”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Collage 30.IV.2023 (mit Bibelzitat aus der Pariser Bibel von 1815)”
Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher). – „Grüne Montage”

Introduction

As a filmmaker, painter and illustrator, Jürgen Boettcher is one of the great artistic personalities of the former GDR and of reunified Germany. The artist, who named himself after his hometown of Strahwalde in Upper Lusatia, has created captivatingly sensual portraits of women as well as bold, symbolic abstractions. As a pioneer of GDR documentary film, he made over fifty films. Both in terms of content and form, his films are groundbreaking. Boettcher searches for meaning and beauty in everyday life. In his DEFA documentary film »Drei von vielen« (Three of Many, 1961), he approaches young workers who have devoted themselves to art and an alternative way of life . The film, dedicated to his Dresden painter friends Peter Herrmann, Peter Graf and Peter Makolies, was immediately banned in the GDR. In addition to his work as a director, Strawalde has always drawn and, since the early 1990s, has been painting more intensively again. Independence and freedom characterise his work to this day. In his paintings, drawings, collages and assemblages, the figurative stands alongside the associative. What is striking is a playful moment, combined with an enthusiasm for materials such as precious papers, tapestries, fabrics, calligraphy, sheet metal and porcelain. Using powerful, poetic imagery, Strawalde collages, even constructs, almost as if in film scenes. Strawalde has developed a style that is both lyrical and fantastical . In it, he explores the formal and expressive possibilities of painting created solely from colour and its relief-like application, while at the same time devoting himself to the free linearity of gestural drawing. His idiosyncratic painting alternates between abstraction, free gestures, figurative and surreal elements, impasto paintings and delicately colouristic drawings with decorative- calligraphic forms with a subtle Japonism and adapted oriental arabesques. While Strawalde's painterly colour palette was initially muted and rather tonal, it became increasingly vibrant and expressive. The application of paint varies from fine brushstrokes to powerful impasto. The diversity and vitality of colours and forms testify to a great love of storytelling with a high degree of musicality. Strawalde's iconic paintings from the »Anna Chron« series are the most direct expression of his additive and associative approach. Representationalism, abstraction and playfulness come together here in an ingenious way. Rich in allusion, »Anna Chron« stands for the »anachronistic« – a false temporal classification. The surreal and the real, the past and the present are united in stylised beauty.

Strawalde (Jürgen Boettcher) Anna Chron

Introduction

Strawalde (Jürgen Boettcher)
Anna Chron