Thomas Schutte

Art Brokerage: Thomas Schutte German Artist. b. 1954. Thomas Schütte is a German contemporary artist. From 1973 to 1981 he studied art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alongside Katharina Fritsch under Gerhard Richter, Fritz Schwegler, and Benjamin Buchloh. He lives and works in Düsseldorf. In the early 1980s Schütte began a series of small sculptural works depicting men stuck in mud. Today, 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) to miniaturised monuments cast in bronze as in Grosser Respekt , Schütte has exploited transitions in scale and materials to great effect throughout his career. 14 Skizzen zum Projekt Groes Theater (14 Sketches for Large Theatre, 1980) comprises a series of photographs of theatrical models featuring Princess Leia action figures striking various poses in front of banner-like fragments: Freedom; In the Name of the People; Pro Status QuoUnited Enemies, made between 1993 and 1997, is a series which comprises over 30 works with figures made out of Fimo modeling 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. 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. Schütte participated in documental in Kassel three times; in 2005, he was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the Venice Biennial.