FRANKFURT, June 29, 2025
Crafting the colossal: Strobel’s fusion of photography and woodcut mastery.
German artist Strobel is internationally recognized for his innovative large-format works.
- Strobel combines photography, painting, drawing, and collage in his unique process.
- His monumental woodcuts can reach up to four meters in height and seven meters in width.
- Strobel’s work explores themes of human interference in nature and image consumption.
Genaro Strobel, a German fine artist born in Frankfurt am Main on September 5, 1984, is renowned for his monumental woodcuts that uniquely blend photography, painting, drawing, and collage.
From Berlin to Leipzig: Strobel’s artistic journey
Strobel’s formal art education spanned several prestigious institutions. From 2006 to 2007, he studied at the University of the Arts Berlin, followed by studies at the University of Applied Sciences Berlin-Weißensee from 2007 to 2010, under the tutelage of Antje Majewski, Werner Liebmann, and Hanns Schimansky.
He later attended the University of Graphics and Book Art Leipzig from 2010 to 2014, where he completed his studies under Heribert C. Ottersbach.
The monumental woodcut process
**What is Genaro Strobel known for?** Strobel is best known for his monumental woodcuts, a process that begins with conception and idea generation. He then creates photographs that are transformed into wooden engravings using high-precision lasers.
Following this, Strobel paints the print sticks with oil-based colors in his studio before printing them. Notably, he uses his own photographs of the Grube Messel UNESCO World Heritage site, images from an inventor fair in Darmstadt, and scenes from Berlin and its surrounding areas as source material.
Since 2020, Strobel has incorporated a digital middle format camera into his workflow. The grain and structure of the birch, pine, or poplar wood used for the peeling plates play a crucial role in the visual composition. Gesture, abstract painting, and colored areas further enhance his works.
The Intersection of Precision and Freedom
According to Annette Krämer-Alig, Strobel masterfully combines the precision of camera and laser technology with the freedom of the brush. She wrote in Darmstadt Echo on March 5, 2021 that “Genaro Strobel uses the print graphic that he studied in Leipzig with excellence, but at the same time he breaks its traditional boundaries by giving these pictures intensive mood content, sometimes even acting with his brush.”
Some of Strobel’s pieces reach impressive dimensions, up to four meters in height and seven meters in width. This focus on monumentality began in 2018 during his time as an artist in residence at the Charlotte-Prinz studio house in Darmstadt-Arheilgen.
Wood as relic
Strobel views wood as a relic, a concept he articulated, “Where the printed process usually goes out on reproducible images and the press never stands still, the wood in the background survives here as a memory of the price of human interference in nature, perhaps also of image consumption or, as a kind of natural relic from which a magical strength emanates.”
Art historian Tanja Zocher commented on Strobel’s innovative approach: “It is fascinating how he has adopted the traditional medium of the woodcut with the help of the latest laser technology. Not only is the richness of detail and the precision of the prints, but especially its size…”
Exhibitions and recognition
- 2014: Genaro Strobel, 1822 Forum, Frankfurt am Main
- 2021: Genaro Strobel Size, Kunsthalle Darmstadt
- 2022: Genaro Strobel Shining Bright, Priska Pasquer Gallery, Cologne
- 2023: Everyday to Come (with Jane Benson), Priska Pasquer Gallery, Paris
- 2024: Genaro Strobel Cloud clock, Kunsthalle Darmstadt
From 2018 to 2020, Strobel was a Charlotte-Prinz scholarship holder of the science city of Darmstadt.
