Thomas Schütte
| Thomas Schütte | |
|---|---|
| Born |
November 16, 1954 Oldenburg, West Germany |
| Nationality | Germany |
| Education | Kunstakademie Düsseldorf |
| Known for | Sculpture |
Thomas Schütte (born November 16, 1954) is a German contemporary artist. He lives and works in Düsseldorf.
From 1973 to 1981 Schütte studied art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alongside Katharina Fritsch under Gerhard Richter, Fritz Schwegler, Daniel Buren and Benjamin Buchloh.
Schütte's multidisciplinary work ranges widely, from early architectural installations to small-scale modeled figures and proposals for monuments, from extensive series of watercolors, to banners, flags, and photographs.
From life-sized figures fabricated in ceramic as in Die Fremden (The Strangers) (1992) to miniaturized monuments cast in bronze as in Grosser Respekt (1993–94), Schütte has exploited transitions in scale and materials to great effect throughout his career.
Initially exhibited at documenta IX in Kassel where they were placed on the portico of the former Roten Palais of the Landgrafen von Hessen, which currently houses a large department store, Die Fremden (The Strangers) overlooked the city. The convoys of refugees from the First Gulf War (1991), and the burning down of refugee shelters for asylum seekers in Germany, formed the contemporary political backdrop to these ceramic figures, which caused a stir at documenta.
Mann im Matsch of 1982 was the very first figure Schütte made. In his works from 1992-1993 – such as Vorher-Nacher (Before After), Grosse Köpfe (Large Heads), Untitled '93, Janus Kopf (Janus Head), and Ohne titel (Doppelkopf) (Untitled (Double head)) (1993) -- exaggerated physiognomies were transferred to a larger scale and a more traditional material. United Enemies, made between 1993 and 1997, is a series which comprises over 30 works with figures made out of Fimo modelling clay and ‘dressed’ in various fabrics and displayed under glass domes. Schütte made eighteen similar sculptures each comprising a pair of small male forms bound together with masking tape and medical sticking plaster; there are also a small number of three-figure works and a few single figures.
In the early 2000s Schütte began a series of small sculptural works depicting men stuck in mud. Completed between 1995 and 2004, Schütte created seventeen different versions of his Grosse Geister (Big Spirits), each in an edition of three and each of the three in a different medium: aluminum, polished bronze, or steel. No two of these works are exactly alike. The eighteenFrauen (Women, 1998–2006), a sculptural series of large, reclining women (first cast in steel in 1998, and after 2000, in bronze), are a pastiche of sculptures by Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore, and Pablo Picasso. The Kreuzzug Modelle series (Crusade Models, 2002–6) features architectural models made in the wake of 9/11. Three Capacity Men (2005) is a sculpture of three grotesque male figures swathed in blankets and peering malevolently in all directions. The almost six-metre-high bronze sculpture Mann im Matsch (Man in Mud) was installed in the artist’s hometown of Oldenburg in 2009.
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