ArtistSwedish-Indonesian
Ardy Strüwer
7 active items
Ardy Struwer called his own style "sensual surrealism" and "postmodern flower power", and the labels, for once, are precise. His paintings explode with colour: women's faces emerge from fields of tropical flowers, birds spread wings across electric-blue skies, elephants wander through psychedelic gardens. It is art that refuses to be serious and yet takes visual pleasure entirely seriously.
Born Eduard Arnaud Struwer in Batavia (Jakarta), Java, on May 11, 1939, he grew up in the Dutch East Indies before moving to the Netherlands at the age of ten. This multicultural childhood, spanning Southeast Asian exuberance and Dutch restraint, left permanent marks on his palette and sensibility. He trained at the Royal Academy in The Hague, then moved to Sweden, where he attended the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm as a guest student in the printmaking department. Sweden became his home, but his art always carried the warmth of his Indonesian origins.
Struwer's creative energy spread across an unusual range of mediums. Beyond paintings and lithographs, he designed glass art that gained increasing popularity in his later years, and collaborated with the textile firm Matt Tema on rugs and carpets that translated his figurative imagery into woven form. Titles like "Love Flower for the Elephants", "Green Pepper Sunset", "Spice Angel", and "Birdwoman" suggest the territory: a world of heightened colour and playful mythology, where nature and the female form intertwine.
His work is held by Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Gemeente Museum in The Hague, and the Peter Stuyvesant Collection. Beyond visual art, Struwer was also active as a screenwriter and comedian, a versatility that speaks to the same restless creative impulse visible in his paintings.
Struwer died on June 6, 2023, at the age of 84.
On Auctionist, 137 Struwer items are indexed across Swedish houses, with Goteborgs Auktionsverk (12 items), Karlstad Hammarö Auktionsverk (7), and Crafoord Stockholm (7) handling the largest volumes. Paintings dominate the higher end, with "Green Pepper Sunset" reaching EUR 5,500 and "Love Flower for the Elephants" achieving SEK 5,560. His glass works and Matt Tema carpets add variety to an auction presence that reflects his colourful, medium-crossing artistic life.