Tata Ronkholz

Tata Ronkholz is one of the most important protagonists of the Becher School and Objective Photography of the 1970s and 1980s in Germany. The urban impressions that the artist collects in the Rhineland and Ruhr region form a cultural memory of the architecture and urban development of the post-war period.
Tata Ronkholz finds her motifs in Cologne, Düsseldorf, Essen and other places in the Rhine-Ruhr region. The most extensive group of works is probably her famous “Trinkhallen”, which she photographed from 1978 onwards and into which she increasingly incorporated photographs of other shop window designs. In collaboration with Thomas Struth, Ronkholz documented the Düsseldorf Rhine harbor from 1979 to 1980 before it was demolished and rebuilt. Industrial gates from harbors and commercial areas form another group of works that follow the principles of strict frontality and black-and-white aesthetics.

Tata Ronkholz was born in Krefeld in 1940 under the maiden name Roswitha Tölle. After studying architecture and interior design at the Werkkunstschule in Krefeld and a one-year apprenticeship at the Schröer furniture store in Krefeld, she started her own business as a product designer. Tata Ronkholz comes into contact with photography through her husband Coco Ronkholz, who is in charge of a catalogue production for Bernd Becher. In 1977, she enrolled at the Düsseldorf State Academy of Art and began photographing industrial doors with a plate camera. A year later, Ronkholz joined Professor Bernd Becher's class. Together with Volker Döhne, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth, she was one of Bernd Becher's first students, who later became legendary as the Becher School. After graduating, she stopped taking photographs in 1985 for financial reasons and worked in a Cologne photo agency until 1995. Tata Ronkholz died in 1997 at Kendenich Castle near Cologne. Numerous posthumous exhibitions in Germany and Europe currently honour the artist's work. Her works can be found in the Museum Ludwig Cologne, the Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf, the Städel Museum Frankfurt and the LACMA Los Angeles.

VAN HAM Art Estate has been managing the estate and archive of Tata Ronkholz since 2011. The estate includes prints, contacts and negatives as well as parts of her correspondence and designs in the context of her earlier interior design work.
In 2018, VAN HAM Art Estate established a committee of experts to oversee the estate academically.