Waldemar Strempler
Introduction and a bit of conversation
Waldemar Strempler and I have been corresponding by email since 2015. When we had the archives open in Santa Fe around that time and were running a gallery for collage art we represented Strempler’s collage art and sold a number of his works at the gallery and on Artsy. In fact I believe we are the only gallery Strempler has ever been represented by.
We featured Strempler in the show Small is the New Big.
When we closed the public space in 2017 and stopped selling works, Strempler kindly donated the reserve of about 40 works to the archives for which we are extremely grateful and cherish his works in the collection.
Anyway, we have had some personal conversations over time and as Waldemar is a very private person I will be careful to only post bits of those conversations strictly in relation to our discussions about art and collage making. I hope to share these works here on the Touchonian over the coming year with interesting snippets of our ongoing conversation.
I personally regard Waldemar Strempler as a unique and important voice is the contemporary collage community. He posts his works on Facebook and on Tumblr regularly for many years now. I would encourage you to check out his body of work and collect it for yourself. He sells his works directly.
Piecing things together from online…
Waldemar Strempler is a graphic designer who is known for his work on assemblages, acrylic painting, collages, drawings, digital montages, object art and photography.
In his earlier life Strempler studied at the School of Advertising and Design in Oberschöneweide and the Academy of Painting and Graphics in Berlin. He also experimented with typography and poetry and he even did some landscapes.
Waldemar Strempler studied directing in the city of Leipzig, Germany, and graphic design in the German capital Berlin. In accordance with artists like Antoni Tà pies, Joseph Beuys, Anselm Kiefer, and Gerhard Richter, Strempler’s concept of art is based upon absolute independency and diversity. His artistic production covers collage, drawing, painting, object art, photography, and digital photomontage.
Born in Thuringia, Germany
1953 to 1965 School education
1965 to 1967 training as a skilled worker in the painting trade
1978 to 1982 studied communication design in Berlin
1982 to 2011 Creative Director at the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation Berlin-Brandenburg
lives and works in Potsdam, Germany
A bit of conversation
TOUCHON: Tell me about your paper. What is the paper culture like there in Germany for getting the kind of old papers and documents that you use? Are there shops or other markets where you collect or from online maybe? What is you strategy for collecting, storing and use? Do you travel around hunting for paper or it is all found locally? How do you keep it in you studio? In boxes, or piles or drawers? What do you enjoy in paper?
STREMPLER: I was lucky enough to move into a 300-year-old house in 1999, which belongs to the foundation Prussian Palaces and Gardens Berlin-Brandenburg, where I worked as a creative director for almost 30 years.
For many years an architect couple lived in the house, who also ran an antique shop. In the attic of this house I found a large amount of old papers (documents, letters, bills, old books, newspapers). It is quite difficult to find such papers in Germany. In the antiquarian bookshops and on the flea markets everything is very expensive and mostly too well preserved for me. I also try to buy papers for small amounts at ebay, but even there everything is quite expensive. I sometimes get something from friends who know my work. So in the meantime I have accumulated a stock that will last for a while. But you are always looking for exactly the right piece. My studio is a mess. Everything is in big piles and when I work, the piles are always being reordered in search of a certain paper. That's why I work quite long on my collages, which lie around unglued and wait for the right piece. My wife has always said that I am a collector and hunter, because I sometimes pick up a piece of paper on the street and when I was travelling I always looked for things that I might use.
I love papers that already tell a story, that have a past. Papers with tears, folds, creases and stains or old inscriptions. Things that many people throw away because they seem useless to them. I try to create a new aesthetic present with such found objects and breathe new life into them.
more to come…
As another German-based collage artist, I very much look forward to more of this conversation!
Enjoyed this conversation and look forward to the continuation. Thanks for sharing.