About Ludwig
Birth
Ludwig Strydom was born on 11 June 1963 at Heidelberg, Gauteng province, South Africa. He was exposed to art from an early age by his parents, Matthys (medical doctor, business man and farmer) and Helene (architect). They are both art lovers and it played a big part in their lives. They became art collectors and art patrons. Ludwig showed sculpture talent from a very young age; he used plasticine clay and made toy men and animals that he played with for hours. The family moved to George in 1968, where he grew up and went to school. His parents also founded the Strydom Gallery in George that year.
Movement
Ludwig started studying the development of movement in babies and animals with his wife, Noline-Ann Strydom, a Clinical Psychologist, in the 1980’s. He knew that there was a sequence, a pattern to find and explore, in our DNA to develop movement. He was always fascinated by movement in nature, especially in water and air. He taught martial arts to pre-primary children and adults based on the principles of movement inherent in DNA, which is mirrored in water. He coined the word “Movelution” in 1991 to describe his revolutionary training methods and used that to practice, analyze and teach the principles of movement.
Rebirth
Ludwig suffered a massive stroke in 1994, which left him paralyzed on the right side of his body and with his speech center destroyed. He had to learn to walk, talk, read and write again. His perception of movement changed a lot; from fighting to rehabilitation and exploring life. He used those experiences later in his martial art, teaching and further developing Movelution. He used what he learned from hard personal experience to help his rehabilitation and started to teach again.
Rebirth Again
He had a disturbing dream/vision when he was practicing relaxation after a class in 2002. He saw himself being spun into a cocoon by a big spider. He realized that signified death. The dream went on and he saw himself slowly coming out from the cocoon as a butterfly with blue, red, orange and yellow wings. Puzzled by the dream of death and rebirth he went home and told his wife about it. The following day he had his second stroke, this time without paralysis, but with damage to his already vulnerable speech center.
Redirection
Ludwig began painting to help himself handle the higher stress levels because of the difficulty of talking and teaching. He scaled down his teaching commitments over that year. He gave away his school to one of his students in 2003 and retired from public teaching. His uncle, Leon Strydom, suggested in 2006 that he take up sculpting again because of the promise he showed as a child. He began after he met George Ramagaga, a sculptor, on his parents’ farm close to George. All the knowledge he discovered in the study of movement is now manifesting in his sculpture.
Silence
George Ramagaga said to Ludwig “If you spend enough time with the wood; the wood will tell you what it wants to become”. (Unfortunately George Ramagaga died shortly after Ludwig met him.) This advice helped Ludwig to become quiet with the wood, to feel the history of the growth of the tree, told through the grain, until he could feel and see that movement. He works to expose that movement, revealed in the history of the movement in water in growth of the wood, in his finished sculpture.
Relocation
Ludwig and his family moved to George in 2009 to be with his parents, the wood and the silence he craved. The sculptures he has made are reflections of movement, silence and rebirth.
He also started to clean his parent’s farm, Bosplaas, from alien vegetation with the great help of his student and training partner Chris Gomersall. This is an ongoing, never ending process to turn the farm into a private nature reserve and to maintain that as such according to his father’s wishes.
His father died in 2022 and Ludwig, with the help of his mother, wife, and two daughers, Monique-Ann Meyer and Nicole-Ann Conradie, continued to promote art in George as his father started with the Strydom Gallery in 1968. Ludwig had a few solo exhibitions at their home of his work. In 2024 they had a conversation with Jacobus Kloppers, well-known painter, where the idea was born to include other artists to continue the legacy of the Strydom Gallery. The name of this exhibition is Evolutio Inventio, the Evolution of Discovering, a good description of any artist’s life, under the name of Ludwig Strydom Gallery.
Ludwig was represented on the Strydom Gallery’s National Exhibitions (George 43, 44, 45, & 46) from 2010 – 2013. He also had four sculptures on the special exhibition for invited artists with the theme “Out of the Wood” in 2011.
Ludwig has a collection of his sculptures at his home for viewing as well as on this website.
The website will be updated with details of his work from time to time.
