Thomas Struth - Photographs Evening Sale New York Wednesday, April 1, 2015 | Phillips

Photographs Evening Sale

New York 1 April 2015 6pm

  • Provenance

    Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin

  • Literature

    Museo de Arte Lima, Thomas Struth, cover
    Schirmer/Mosel, Thomas Struth: Photographs 1978-2010, p. 111

  • Catalogue Essay


    “I wanted to make photographs in which everything was so complex and detailed that you could look at them forever and never see everything.”




    Thomas Struth initially studied painting at the Dusseldorf academy under the German artist Gerhard Richter, before turning to photography. Since then, Struth’s well-known large-scale cityscapes and museum photographs have made him one of the preeminent European art photographers of our time. Struth’s knowledge of painting is evident in his mural-scale images, highlighting his mastery of formal composition and color.

    During the late 1990s, Struth began to look at landscapes, in particular jungle scenes, traveling to Australia, Japan, Southwest China and Peru. These jungle-scapes are as complex are they are calming. It is fitting that Stuth’s series is aptly named Pictures from Paradise. Struth’s work has focused on wild nature, not only his own representations of what can be viewed as paradise, but also questioning its representation within cultures.

    Through these lush and steamy images taken at various locations throughout the world, Struth has taken on the role as a world traveler and storyteller. Each image conveying a texture so dense, it hinders the viewer’s eye from even entering into the misty and overwhelmingly verdant landscape, no matter how tangible it may seem. This complexity is masterfully conveyed in the featured lot, Paradise 26 (Bougainville), Palpa, Peru. The richness of detail, lush crimson and fuchsia shades, evokes sultriness within the composition. Although the subject matter may, at first glance, appear conventional, Struth’s keen photographic eye captures an intricacy and density in its “all over” nature that envelops us. Perhaps drawing us in closer to our own stillness and meditations: our own paradise.

  • Artist Biography

    Thomas Struth

    Thomas Struth is a German photographer best known for his large-scale, classically composed photos of museum, cityscapes, and family portraits. Struth is a prominent member of the Düsseldorf School of Photography, the group of artists who studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the mid-1970s under influential photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher. Struth’s highly centralized, balanced photos incorporate cutting-edge photographic techniques and the tenets of classical composition to develop the documentarian aims of the Bechers.

    Struth’s work has been widely celebrated by the international art community. He represented Germany at the 44th Venice Biennale in 1990 and has been the subject of major retrospectives including those at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Haus der Kunst, Munich. He lives and works in Berlin and New York.

     
    View More Works

16

Thomas Struth

Paradise 26 (Bougainville), Palpa, Peru

2003
Chromogenic print, face-mounted to Plexiglas.
80 x 63 in. (203.2 x 160 cm)
Overall 85 x 68 1/4 x 2 3/8 in. (215.9 x 173.4 x 6 cm)
Signed in pencil, printed title, date and number 6/10 on an artist's label affixed to the reverse of the frame.

Estimate
$100,000 - 150,000 

Sold for $112,500

Contact Specialist
Vanessa Kramer Hallett
Worldwide Head, Photographs

Shlomi Rabi
Head of Sale, New York

General Enquiries:
+1 212 940 1245

Photographs Evening Sale

New York 1 April 2015 6pm