Thomas Struth - Photographs New York Tuesday, October 1, 2013 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Acquired directly from the artist

  • Literature

    Nassau County Museum of Art, Explosive Photography, p. 25

  • Catalogue Essay

    As one of the most acclaimed graduates of the famed Düsseldorf School of Photography, Thomas Struth has created an indelible body of work whose contribution to the field of contemporary photography is perhaps best captured in his Museums series, of which the current lot is an example. Depicting one of the enigmatic Vatican rooms beautifully adorned by the Renaissance luminary Raphael, the current lot depicts an intimate cluster of museum goers whose scale and composition ironically resonate with the fresco scene unfolding above them. In so doing, Struth cleverly compresses the centuries dividing the fresco from its spectators into a single, hybrid visual. Furthermore, the massive scale of the print imbues it with the monumental air that had been traditionally relegated to public murals, much like the one presented in Struth’s photograph. The result is a composition that softens the lines dividing past from present and subject from object. As the viewers in the Stanze di Raffaello become objects of study under Struth’s lens, viewers of the photograph inadvertently echo the composition, becoming unwitting participants in the seemingly endless nature of the work.

  • 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.

     
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24

Stanze di Raffaello I, Rome

1990
Chromogenic print, Diasec mounted, printed later.
76 x 54 in. (193 x 137.2 cm)
Signed in pencil, printed title, date and number 3/10 on a label affixed to the reverse of the frame.

Estimate
$120,000 - 180,000 

Sold for $149,000

Contact Specialist
Vanessa Kramer Hallett
Worldwide Head, Photographs
vhallett@phillips.com
+1 212 940 1245

Photographs

New York 30 September & 1 October 2013