Lothar Strauch

Gustav Max Lothar Strauch (born December 21, 1907 in Stuttgart , † December 27, 1991 in Erlangen ) was a German sculptor and graphic artist . He lived and worked in Berlin , Rome and Erlangen and is considered one of the last and most important representatives of the " Berlin School of Sculpture ".

Life

Childhood and youth 1907–1928

Lothar Strauch was born in Stuttgart as the son of bank director Max Strauch. There he attended various high schools until in 1924 he switched to the State Art School in Berlin to begin training as a drawing teacher - and to become a sculptor. He was able to develop his artistic inclination in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of his well-situated home in Württemberg, where artists like Olaf Gulbransson (1873-1958) frequented. The father - who in addition to his economic career also wrote specialist books, an autobiography ("On the way to the bank director") and humorous and artistic works ("Wurzel-Plastik") - put no obstacles in the way of the son's talent. On the contrary: The Stuttgart sculptor Ulfert Janssen (1878–1956), who was friends with the family, allowed the aspiring talent to model in his studio. Lothar Strauch enjoyed an early friendship with the sculptor Ernst Balz (1904–1944), who later became Wilhelm Gerstel's son-in-law. He received the most extensive support from his drawing teacher Max Bauer (born 1886), a student of the well-known Swiss expressionist Cuno Amiet (1868–1961). When Bauer organized an exhibition in the Stuttgart Museum of Applied Arts, he took up some of Lothar Strauch's prints. In addition, he encouraged him to leave school early and give preference to the State Art School in Berlin.

Studies 1928–1932

For Lothar Strauch, as for many artists of his generation, Berlin in the twenties was a defining experience. In Berlin he experienced all the essential stages of his sculptural career; the artistic talent of the young man received increasing recognition and promotion in the art metropolis. Lothar Strauch broke off his drawing teacher training after four semesters. Instead, he studied for a year with the painter and graphic artist Willy Jäckel (1888–1944), then with the sculptor Herbert Garbe (1888–1945), who, like Jäckel, taught him privately. In 1927, Strauch traveled to Spain with other students under the direction of the Tübingen art historian Georg Weise . It was his first trip abroad before he, at Garbe's suggestion, began studying at the “United State Schools for Free and Applied Arts” (before 1923: “University of Fine Arts”) in 1928.

Herbert Garbe recommended Lothar Strauch to the well-known sculptor Edwin Scharff (1887–1955), who taught in the applied arts department. But because of the greater opportunities for free work, the young artist went to Wilhelm Gerstel (1879–1963), the head of the department for free art and deputy director of the "United State Schools". Gerstel, the father figure of a whole series of important sculptors and one of Max Beckmann's close circle of friends , also became the most important teacher for Lothar Strauch, with whom he studied from 1928 to 1932. He made friends a. with fellow students Ernst Balz (1904–1944), Hans Steger (1907–1968) and Gustav Seitz (1906–1969) as well as with Christiane Gerstel-Naubereit (1901–2001), with whom he remained connected until the last decade of his life.

Travels 1932–1939

"In 1932 I finished my studies in order to get to know the working methods in other countries" (Lothar Strauch in his résumé). The following years were therefore devoted to great journeys:

Lothar Strauch spent 1932 to 1934 in Italy, where he worked in Rome and the Anticoli Corrado artists' colony . In 1934 he visited Greece and returned to Berlin via Switzerland, where he continued his career as a freelance sculptor. Among the numerous exhibitions in which he took part were the last two work shows of the “ Berlin Secession ” in 1931 and 1935/36. Zurich, where his father had lived in retirement since 1927, became an artistic and private refuge in politically uncertain times. As early as 1936, Lothar Strauch felt the art policy of the National Socialist rulers in Germany when the Bremen art show organized by Ludwig Roselius in Böttcher-Strasse was banned after just three weeks, a measure that was primarily directed against the collector and his commitment to judged modern art. The exhibition with works by young German artists contained six sculptures and five woodcuts by Lothar Strauch. Shortly afterwards, Strauch received the Rome grant from the Prussian Academy of the Arts. So he lived and worked from 1937 to 1938 in the traditional Villa Massimo . Even before his return from Italy, the Prussian Academy awarded him another scholarship, this time to Olevano, which Strauch was unable to accept immediately because of an assignment in Berlin. That is why he first traveled back to Germany via Zurich in 1938, where the political events made all further plans invalid. The sculptor was drafted into the Wehrmacht as an infantryman in December 1939.

plant

Lothar Strauch experienced the end of the Second World War as a wounded man in a hospital in Erlangen. When Berlin was destroyed, he had lost irreplaceable works from his studio on Kantstrasse. After his release, Strauch did not return to the ruined Berlin, but stayed in the Franconian university town, which was almost spared from the destruction of the war . His wife Irene, whom he married shortly after the war broke out, came to him from Berlin. In 1946 and 1948 the children Sabine and Andreas were born in Erlangen. In Franconia, Lothar Strauch met artist friends from the pre-war years again: Wilhelm Gerstel, who had lived in the Bamberg area since 1945, and the painter Hermann Wilhelm (1897–1970), who had come to Nuremberg from Berlin. Public commissions and growing recognition as a graphic artist and sculptor soon followed. As early as 1947 Lothar Strauch took part in the exhibition of the "Union of Intellectual and Cultural Creators in the ADGB", followed a year later by the exhibition of the "Free Group", and in 1955 the exhibition of the Gerstel students in Karlsruhe. In addition to his career as a freelance artist, he worked as a drawing teacher from 1957 to 1977. In 1962 Lothar Strauch received the city of Erlangen's first art prize - the first of many awards in the coming decades. For the 75th birthday, the City Museum Erlangen organized a large solo exhibition, also in 1987 for the 80th birthday in the Palais Stutterheim. In 1988, three years before his death, the artist received the Federal Cross of Merit for his life's work .

Lothar Strauch “kept a simple, direct language of forms and kept his work free from anything sublime. The respect for people, for the dignity of both large and small models, is reflected in the nobility of his sculptures and corresponding graphics. "(Klaus Springen)

Strauch was one of the last artists of the so-called "Berlin Sculpture School", whose tradition goes back almost 150 years: from Schadow to Rauch, Drake, Eberlein, Tuaillon, Gaul to de Fiori, Scharff, Gerstel, Seitz, Cremer and Marcks. A characteristic of the Berlin Sculpture School was a classicism that did not seek idealistic pathos, but truthfulness and in this search for a congenial correspondence between sculpture and object. References to the French art of Maillol and Despiau, but also to that of Degas and Meunier, come to mind. Characteristic of Lothar Strauch - with exact observation and faithfulness to realistic detail - was the lack of any pathos. Strauch's characters avoid heroic or exalted attitudes, have no exaggerated titles, and are not subject to any stylization. The basis of his work was the apprehension of reality and its adequate, stylized transfer into plastic only within the boundaries of the non-deforming. Lothar Strauch was an excellent portraitist and animal sculptor. His realism is surprisingly close to modern trends in the visual arts, which seek photographic accuracy of reproduction. He always preferred one material: even if Strauch worked in plaster of paris or clay, his ultimate goal was to cast bronze.

In his work, Lothar Strauch concentrated above all on the classic theme of sculpture since ancient Greece: on the human body, but also on the sensitively observed animal studies (birds, cats, panthers, "freezing cows"). Since the 1960s, his sculptures often have a bizarre note and increasingly dispense with the style will of the 1950s. His late sculptures (for example the girls' nudes) impressively demonstrate Lothar Strauch's great ability, which, anchored in the tradition of reality-related classicism, took up post-modern trends. Strauch's works, which at first appear completely natural and simple, therefore reveal, on closer inspection, a far-reaching dialogue that the artist had with art history throughout his work.

literature

• Johann Konrad Eberlein  : Lothar Strauch 1907 - 1991. Sculpture and graphics, directory of the artist's works. With a contribution by Theodore Klitzke. Berlin 1993.
• In memoriam. Lothar Strauch and his time. Erlangen Art Museum. Erlangen 2007.
• Lothar Strauch. Exhibition for the 75th birthday. Organized by the non-profit association Erlangen eV and the Kunstverein Erlangen eV in cooperation with the City Museum Erlangen. Erlangen 1982.
• Max Strauch : Root plastic. Finds from nature. Collected and interpreted. 30 collotype boards. Esslingen, Paul Neff Verlag, 1921.
• Jürgen Weichardt : Sculptor in Berlin 1925 to 1935. Exhibition in the "Paul Dierkes-Halle" in the museum village of Cloppenburg. Published by the Paul Dierkes Foundation 1985.