Carl Strüwe

Carl Strüwe (* December 2, 1898 in Bielefeld ; †  January 7, 1988 there ; full name: Carl Heinrich Jakob Strüwe ) was a German graphic artist and photographer who, with his book "Formen des Mikrokosmos" (Munich, 1955), the art of Established microphotography as a separate artistic subject. In 1951 and 1954 Strüwe received the Photokina plaques for high-quality photographic achievements in his photokina exhibitions. In 1986 he received the Bielefeld Culture Prize for his complete photographic work.

Life

Carl Strüwe was the first of five sons of the married couple Wilhelmine and Carl Strüwe. The father, Carl Strüwe (1863–1937), was an independent master painter, teacher at the painters 'college and honorary master of the Bielefeld painters' guild . The mother was Wilhelmine Strüwe geb. Dunkel (1875-1956).

From 1905 to 1913 Strüwe attended elementary school and from 1913 to 1917 completed an apprenticeship as a lithographer at E. Gundlach AG in Bielefeld. After the journeyman's examination in 1917, he became a soldier in the First World War, from which he returned physically unharmed. In 1919 he returned to his apprenticeship company and, with interruptions during the Second World War, stayed there until 1963 as an employed graphic designer. In addition, from 1919 to 1923 he studied drawing, painting and writing in evening and Sunday classes at the craft and applied arts school in Bielefeld with professors Ludwig Godewols , Karl Muggly (drawing, painting) and Fritz Eich (writing and book equipment).

In 1923 Carl and Hedwig Strüwe, geb. Haase (1896-1992). The marriage remained childless. Until the early 1970s, the couple traveled together to Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Tunisia and Morocco. From 1939 to 1940 Carl Strüwe was a soldier in World War II. 1945 bombs destroyed his studio and a large part of his picture archive.

His grave is in the cemetery in Bielefeld-Schildesche.

plant

From 1924 Strüwe turned to photography as an autodidact. First with travel pictures on the subject of “Traces of the Hohenstaufen in Italy”, a photographic-literary historiography followed up to 1952, which ended with the book “Hohenstaufen in Italy - Pictures and Words” (Bielefeld, 1986).

In 1926, Carl Strüwe began his main artistic work with a first microphotograph with the image-related title “White floating over gray”. By 1959 a complex of 280 microphotographs arose from this, 96 of which he collected in his monograph “Forms of the Microcosm - Shape and Design of a World of Images” as the result of his visual knowledge gained up to then (Munich, 1955). The book shows styles of the “ New Objectivity ” of the 1920s, its own symbolism in the 1930s and, with its exposure montages, also makes its own contribution to the “ subjective photography ” of the 1950s. His microphotographs follow their own pictorial order, independent of the scientific taxonomies of the objects collected here. With this work, Carl Strüwe established artistic microphotography as a separate artistic subject and has since been regarded as its trailblazer and pioneer.

In the 1950s, works by Carl Strüwe found their way into the photo avant-garde of his time, for example in exhibitions and publications by the movement “The New Landscape” around György Kepes at MIT in Cambridge, USA, and the group “Subjective Photography” around Otto Steinert in Saarbrücken . To this day, his microphotographs are shown, published and collected internationally.

Work and work groups

• 1916–1922 Early drawings and prints
• 1920–1950s advertising graphics, advertising photography
• 1924–1961 Travel and documentary photography: "Traces of the Hohenstaufen in Italy"
• 1926–1959 Microphotography: "Forms of the Microcosm"
• 1954–1972 Free graphics and painting
• 1920s to 1970s texts on image theory, poetry, prose: "Language, you buyable!" (Novel, unpublished)

Solo exhibitions (selection)

• Forms of the microcosm, photographs by Carl Strüwe. Hauswedell Gallery, Hamburg 1947.
• Carl Strüwe, microphotographs. Overbeck Society , Lübeck 1947.
• Carl Strüwe, photographs and watercolors. Stadtisches Kunsthaus Bielefeld, 1948.
• Carl Strüwe, microphotographs. Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, 1949.
• Photomicrographs by Carl Strüwe, Bielefeld. Solo exhibition, photokina, Cologne 1950.
• microcosm. forms of nature. photos by carl strüwe. Stadtisches Kunsthaus Bielefeld, 1956.
• Carl Strüwe and Manfred Kage . Microphotographs, Werkkunstschule Bielefeld, 1966 (catalog).
• Carl Strüwe, Formen des Mikrokosmos, retrospective, Kulturhistorisches Museum Bielefeld, 1982 (catalog).
• Carl Strüwe, Formen des Mikrokosmos, microphotographs 1926–1956 (Monkmeyer bundle), Lempertz House, Berlin, 2004.
• Carl Strüwe, white floating over gray, microphotographs 1926–1959. 34th Symposium Center for Biotechnology, Bielefeld University, 2009.
• Carl Strüwe, Journeys in Unknown Worlds, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, 2012 (catalog).

Participation in exhibitions (selection)

• Bielefeld artist. Otto Fischer Art Salon, Bielefeld 1946.
• subjective photography, International Exhibition of Modern Photography, Staatl. School f. Art u. Craft Saarbrücken, 1951.
• Photokina picture shows, 1951.
• subjective photography, European Exhibition of Modern Photography, German Society for Photography, Belgian House, Cologne, 1951.
• The New Landscape in Art and Science, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA, 1951.
• Photokina, International Photo and Cinema Exhibition Cologne, 1954.
• young west 54, painting plastic graphics, Städt. Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, 1954.
• Brussels World's Fair, 1958.
• German photographer, pioneer of contemporary photography, Museum Ludwig Cologne, 1987.
• The photo as an autonomous image, experimental design 1839–1989, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, 1989 and Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, 1990.
• subjective photography, The German Contribution 1948–1963, Institute for Foreign Relations, Stuttgart, 1989.
• Un monde non-objectiv en photographie, Galerie Thessa Herold, Paris, 2003.
• True Sign, Photography and Science, Museums of the City of Dresden, 2007.
• Les années 1930, La fabrique de 'L'Homme nouveau', Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Montreal, 2008.
• Diatoms - sense of form, Phyletisches Museum, Jena, 2011.
• Microphotography, Beauty Beyond the Visible, Museum for Photography, Berlin, 2010/2011.

Fonts

• Carl Strüwe: Forms of the Microcosm. Shape and design of a world of images. Prestel, Munich 1955.
• Carl Strüwe: Traces of the Hohenstaufen. Pictures and words. Edition Jesse, Bielefeld 1986.

Works in collections

• Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, USA, 1949.
• Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, 1954.
• Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, 1955.
• Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Graphic Collection, 1982 (donation of the main works).
• Gruber Collection, Museum Ludwig Cologne, 1984.
• Collection of 20th Century Photography, Museum Ludwig Cologne, 1986, 1991.
• Carl Strüwe Archive Bielefeld, founded in 1992.
• Photographic collection in the Museum of Art and Industry Hamburg, 1994.
• Goetz Collection, Munich, 2004.

literature

• Karl Georg Heise: Nature and Art Form. On the problem of microphotography. In: Die Zeit of March 6, 1947, p. 4.
• Karl Georg Heise: About Carl Strüwe. In: Allgemeine Zeitung (Aachen), 1947.
• Alfred Richard Meyer (Munkepunke): To the exhibition Carl Strüwe, Formen des Mikrokosmos, Lübeck, 1948. In: the maer of the musa expressionistica. Düsseldorf 1948.
• Arthur Gewehr: Formative Microphotography. Carl Strüwe and his work. In: Photo-Prisma , year 1950, p. 312.
• Franz Roh: Forms of the Microcosm. (Exhibition review) In: Die Kunst vom June 1957, o. P.
• Gottfried Jäger : Carl Strüwe. The photographic work 1924–1962. Edition Marzona, Düsseldorf / Bielefeld 1982.
• Hans-Michael Koetzle: Lexicon of Photographers 1900 to today. Munich 2002, p. 450.
• Reinhold Mißelbeck (Ed.): Prestel-Lexicon of Photographers. From the beginning in 1839 to the present. Munich 2002, p. 231.
• Gottfried Jäger: Microphotography as an obsession. The photographic work of Carl Strüwe (1898–1988). Verlag für Druckgrafik Hans Gieselmann, Bielefeld 2011. (also dissertation, Bielefeld University, 2011.)
• Jutta Hülsewig-Johnen, Gottfried Jäger, Thomas Thiel (eds.): Carl Strüwe. Travel to unknown worlds. Hirmer Verlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-7774-6051-2

Web links

• Official website of the Carl Strüwe Archive in Bielefeld (complete works, written estate, archive materials)