JÜRGEN BÖTTCHER

Jürgen Böttcher is one of those rare figures in the artistic arena who is dually talented. He is also a pioneering film director and documentary maker. As a film-maker too, he came into conflict with the censors in the GDR. Many of his films were banned, some of them destroyed before they could be shown.

The painter's enthusiasm for a fury of colour and drawing is in stark contrast to his talent for sober and precise observation as a prominent maker of documentaries. His films are characterised by an almost ascetic restraint in documenting the realities of life: generally in black and white, these works portray the harsh reality of life and work for 'simple' people in a brutally honest fashion using long sensitive takes (Ofenbauer – 'Oven Builders', 1962; Wäscherinnen – 'The Laundry Women', 1972; Martha – 'Martha', 1962) or reflect political history in meditative collages of images and sound (Die Mauer – 'The Wall', 1990).

 Yet Jürgen Böttcher would not be Strawalde if his film oeuvre did not include some playful experimental films blending painting and film: Venus nach Giorgione ('Venus after Giorgione') or Frau am Klavichord ('Woman at the Clavichord') document the painting over of art postcards, illustrating the richness of free interaction between colour and forms. In the art room of the German Bundestag, these films will be showing, alongside the original painted-over postcards.