Gotthard Schuh

Gotthard Schuh (December 22, 1897 in Schöneberg near Berlin – December 29, 1969 in Küsnacht, Zurich) was a Swiss photographer, painter and graphic artist.

Early life and education

Gotthard Schuh was born in Berlin to Swiss parents, the son of engineer Christian Heinrich Schuh. In 1902 the family moved to Aarau, where he attended elementary school and from 1914 the local high school. He began to paint and Otto Wyler was his first teacher. In 1916 he graduated from the trade school in Basel. During WW1 from 1917 Schuh was drafted into the border service as a soldier.

Painter

From 1919 he lived as a painter in Basel and Geneva. After a long trip to Italy in 1920, he settled in Munich as a painter. In 1926 he returned to Switzerland and set up a photography business, and in 1927 married Marga Zürcher from St. Gallen with whom he had a son Kaspar (* 1934). He moved to Zurich and from 1928 to 1931 held exhibitions of painting and joined the Basel artist group “Rot-Blau”.

Photographer

In 1931 his first photos were published in a Zurich magazine and in 1932 he held a photography exhibition in Paris, where he met Picasso, Léger and Braque.

From 1932 he joined the Zürcher Il­lus­tri­erte under Arnold Kübler, working with Hans Staub and Paul Senn, and until 1937 Schuh also worked freelance for Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, Paris Match and Life. His assignments during 1938/1939 took him all over Europe and to Indonesia. He and Marga divorced in 1939.

After about ten years as a re­porter he be­came the first pic­ture ed­i­tor for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. He and Edwin Arnet cre­ated the NZZ sup­ple­ment Das Woch­enende, which showcased Swiss and international pho­tog­ra­phy in ad­di­tion to his own re­portage. From this period a sig­nif­i­cant part of his own pho­to­graphic work il­lus­trated books, of which the most suc­cess­ful was In­seln der Götter pub­lished in 1941, the result of his al­most 11-month jour­ney through Sin­ga­pore, Java, Suma­tra and Bali, un­der­taken just be­fore the war. It was a suc­cess­ful mix­ture of re­portage and self-reflection, with a poetic quality that Schuh some­times valued over doc­u­men­tary au­then­tic­ity:

“Every­one just de­picts what he sees, and every­one just sees what cor­re­sponds to his being.”

This is ev­i­dent in the book Begeg­nun­gen which Schuh pub­lished in 1956, in which com­bined older and more re­cent im­ages in free association, in accord with the ob­jec­tives of the ‘Kol­legium Schweiz­erischer Pho­tographen’, the Acad­emy of Swiss Pho­tog­ra­phers which he founded to­gether with Paul Senn, Wal­ter Läubli, Werner Bischof and Jakob Tuggener, a loose group that promoted an ‘au­teur’ emphasis.

Later life

In 1944 Schuh he married Annamarie Custer with whom he had two daughters, Claudia and Sybille. After 1960, he returned to painting.

Gotthard Schuh died in 1969 in Küsnacht on Lake Zurich. Fo­to­s­tiftung Schweiz ad­min­is­ters the rights to Schuh's im­ages, hosting pho­tographs by Schuh on the on­line data­base of Key­stone AG, Zurich, for pub­lic use (see www.​keystone.​ch).

Exhibitions

• Helmhaus, Zurich, September 2 - October 1, 1967
• Kunsthaus Zurich, June 19 - August 29, 1982
• Museum of Design Basel, February 4 - March 16, 1986
• Swiss Photo Foundation, Winterthur, May 30 - October 11, 2009
• Musee Niépce, Chalon sur Saône, February 27 - May 30, 2010
• Villa dei Cedri, Bellinzona, July 18 - October 31, 2010
• Fundacion Mapfre, Instituto de Cultura Madrid, December 13, 2011 - February 19, 2012
• Artef, Gallery for Art Photography Zurich, September 13, 2012 - November 17, 2012

Pub­li­ca­tions

Schuh, Gotthard; Gasser, Martin, 1955-, (author.); Mora, Gilles, 1945-, (author,); Pfrunder, Peter, (author,); Stiftung für die Photographie (Switzerland) (host institution.); Musée Nicéphore Nièpce (Charleroi) (host institution.) (2009), Gotthard Schuh : a kind of infatuation, Steidl ; London : Thames & Hudson [distributor], ISBN 978-3-86521-830-8 {{citation}}: |author2= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) Schuh, Gotthard; Streiff, David (1982), Gotthard Schuh : Photographien aus den Jahren 1929-1963, Benteli, ISBN 978-3-7165-0405-5 Schuh, Gotthard; Gasser, Martin, 1955-; Magnaguagno, Guido; Mora, Gilles, 1945-; Pfrunder, Peter; Fundacion Mapfre; Stiftung fur die Photographie (Switzerland) (2011), Gotthard Schuh, TF Editores, ISBN 978-84-15253-02-0{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) Schuh, Gotthard (1941), Inseln der Götter : Java, Sumatra, Bali, Morgarten-verlag, retrieved 11 May 2020 Schuh, Gotthard; Campione, Francesco; Pfrunder, Peter; Ragno, Gian Franco; Museo delle culture extraeuropee (Lugano, Switzerland) (2006), L'isola degli dèi Bali nell'opera di Gotthard Schuh, 25 Novembre 2006 - 1 Aprile 2007 = the Island of the gods, Bali in the work of Gotthard Schuh, 25 November 2006 - 1 April 2007, Edizione MCEL, ISBN 978-88-7777-026-4 Schuh, Gotthard (1956), Instants volés, instants donnés, [Guilde du livre, retrieved 11 May 2020 Schuh, Gotthard (1935), Zürich, Oprecht, retrieved 11 May 2020 Price, David; Schuh, Gotthard, 1897-1969 (1983), The other Italy, Olive, ISBN 978-0-946889-01-3{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) Schuh, Gotthard; Arnet, Edwin, 1901-1962 (1941), Tirggel : ein altes Weihnachtsgebäck, Amstutz & Herdeg, retrieved 11 May 2020{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

Awards

1957: Venice Gold Medal 1967: Appointed Cavaliere (Italy)

==Bibliography==

Champeau, Albert (1976), Créatis : pour une photographie au présent, PUBLICO, ISSN 0399-7596