Thomas Schütte

Thomas Schütte's body of work reflects a great virtuosity and love of experimentation. He explores traditional genres and themes as well as different media and materials. Schütte forms sculptures from steel, aluminium, bronze, plasticine, ceramics, wood and glass, paints delicate watercolour portraits, and contemplates architecture and the spatial principles of modernism.

A central theme in his work is the human body, whether as drawing, etching, bronze or ceramic. The pieces exhibited here from the Sophie series show a woman named Sophie. Schütte's portraits at first seem like sketches from the 19th century, yet one senses the contemporary gaze: in simple strokes, sometimes clear and firm, sometimes hesitant and tentative, the artist shows us here not only the variety of ways to represent the female form, but also the richness of the artistic technique of etching, which he applies masterfully.

Schütte studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1973 to 1981 under Fritz Schwegler and Gerhard Richter. In 1981, he took part in the highly acclaimed exhibition Westkunst in Cologne. Numerous international exhibitions have followed, including in New York, Rome and Amsterdam. In 1987, his works were represented for the first time at the Skulptur Projekte in Münster, and he has taken part in Documenta three times. In 2005 he received the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale, and in 2016 the artist opened his Skulpturenhalle in Neuss, which is based on a design he developed.

Thomas Schütte (born 1954 in Oldenburg) lives and works in Düsseldorf.

About the technique

Etching (from the Latin radere, "to scratch, take away, remove") refers to a graphic intaglio printing process. For intaglio printing, the motif is scratched into the surface of a printing plate (in etching, with a so-called etching needle) and then ink is applied. The ink remains in the indentations, while the ink is removed from the flat parts of the plate before printing.