Jürgen Böttcher Strawalde. Painter and Director

An 80th-birthday retrospective

The documentary filmmaker Jürgen Böttcher, who, as a painter, is better known by the name Strawalde, is regarded as one of the most outstanding artists of the GDR. His debut as a filmmaker came in 1965 with the release of “Jahrgang 1945”, which was banned by the East German authorities. He continued making numerous documentary and experimental films, four of which received awards at international festivals. In addition to filming, Jürgen Böttcher devoted much of his time to painting. Many of his works contain artistic references to Italian painting of the Renaissance, which he studied at the Lindenau Museum in Altenburg, and paintings of European modernity – in particular, Picasso. His exhibitions in Dresden, Karl Marx City and Berlin received a great deal of attention in East Germany, and after 1989, his works were shown in numerous exhibitions in all of Germany and around the world – in France, the United States and Brazil. Previous retrospectives focused either on his work as a film director, such as the exhibition at the Leipzig Documentary Film Festival, or his work as the painter Strawalde. Now for the first time, the Lindenau Museum in Altenburg will present a comprehensive exhibition containing his cinematic and graphic works. The exhibition also highlights the flip-flopping of East German cultural policymakers who originally banned his works and ostracized him, but later officially embraced him and recognized his accomplishments with the DEFA National Prize.

Artistic director: Matthias Flügge, Curators: Lucius Grisebach und Jutta Penndorf