Thomas Struth

Thomas Struth was born in 1954 in Geldern, Germany. He lives and works in Berlin. He studied photography at Düsseldorf School from 1973, where, together with Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer and Thomas Ruff, he was a student of Bernd and Hilla Becher, as well as of Gerhard Richter. He became one of the protagonists of that German generation that marked the history of contemporary photography. It was there that he began a photographic practice that has consistently developed to this day, through series of great technical and formal rigor, but also of great thematic diversity: portraits of families around the world, visitors in museums and monuments, dense tropical forests, laboratories and cutting-edge technological research machinery, in front photographs, all perfectly clear and detailed. For over thirty years, his work has been a contemporary look at a changing world.

Considered one of the most important names in contemporary photography, his work has been widely exhibited and awarded. He received the Werner Mantz Prize for Photography in the Netherlands in 1992 and the Spectrum-International Prize for Photography from the Foundation of Lower Saxony in 1997. He participated in Documenta IX (Kassel) in 1992 and in the Venice Biennale in 1990 and 2012. In 2014, he received an Honorary Fellowship, Royal Institute of British Architects; in  2016, was elected Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received the Centenary Medal and Honorary Membership da Royal Photographic Society, London. He was also granted in 2018 the Honorary Magister Artium Gandensis, by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts (KASK), Ghent.

Recent retrospective exhibitions have been dedicated to him in museums such as the Folkwang Museum (Essen); Martin-Gropius-Bau (Berlin); Haus der Kunst (Munich); the High Museum (Atlanta, Georgia); MAST Foundation (Bologna); Guggenheim Museum (Bilbao); Serralves Museum (Oporto); Whitechapel Gallery (London); Kunsthaus Zurich, among many other exhibitions. His works are represented in prestigious collections such as Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art in New York, Tate Gallery in London, Museum Kunst Palast in Dusseldorf, among others.

CB, janeiro 2021