Biography:

Director Jürgen Böttcher is also a painter who goes by the pseudonym Strawalde.  He was born on July 8, 1931 in Frankenberg, Saxony and studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts from 1949 to 1953. Because of ideological differences, he was blacklisted and thrown out of the Association for Visual Arts in the fall of 1961. Only in the 1980s was the originality of Böttcher’s artwork recognized. His paintings belong to important art collections, including those of the National Gallery in Berlin, Albertina in Vienna, Boston Public Library, Museum Ludwig in Cologne and Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. In addition to internationally known German museums, his paintings have been exhibited in Canada, France, Brazil, and Singapore. In 2012, the Lindenau-Museum in Altenburg hosted a retrospective entitled “STRAWALDE Jürgen Böttcher.”

As a filmmaker, Böttcher studied directing at the German Academy for Film (now “Konrad Wolf” Academy for Film and Television Potsdam-Babelsberg) from 1955 to 1960. He then worked as a director at the DEFA Studio for Documentary Films until 1991. Far from the DEFA documentary mainstream, Böttcher made over forty aesthetically provocative films influenced by his experience as a painter.

Despite the recognition he received, his career was marked by problems with the authorities. His first documentary, Drei von vielen (Three of Many, 1961), a portrait of three amateur painters in the evening class he taught, was banned and not shown until 1988. His only narrative feature film, Jahrgang 45 (Born in ’45, 1965), which was inspired by Italian neo-realism and has attained cult status among cineastes, was also banned.

Most of Böttcher’s documentaries reflect his artistic interests. Kurzer Besuch bei Hermann Glöckner (Hermann Glöckner: A Brief Visit, 1984) is a portrait of one of the most important East German representatives of the constructivist art movement. The three films in his experimental trilogy Verwandlungen (Transformations, 1981) merge his talent as a filmmaker and painter, as they document on 35mm his overpainting of postcards of three well-known paintings. His two full-length documentaries—Die Mauer (The Wall, 1990) and Konzert im Freien (A Place in Berlin, 2001), both considered masterpieces by critics—also juxtapose history and art.

Since 1994, Böttcher has shot video diaries, some of which he has shared with audiences. Böttcher lives in Berlin.

See Böttcher's website strawalde.de and a short film on the artist, interviewed by Günter Gaus:

http://www.goethe.de/kue/flm/prj/kub/flm/en3947235.htm

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