KUB 2019.03
Thomas Schütte
13 | 07 – 06 | 10 | 2019
The German artist Thomas Schütte, who works in the media of sculpture and drawing, is one of the most significant artists active today, and has participated in documenta several times. In April 2016 he opened his Skulpturenhalle in Neuss, an exhibition space presenting contemporary sculpture as well as serving as a depot for his own works.
Schütte’s artistic practice also encompasses watercolors, drawings, and models, together with installations such as Bibliothek (2014/2017), a model at original scale that is being presented on the ground floor of Kunsthaus Bregenz.
His most important group of works are the sculptures. For the most part they begin life as small wax or clay models, and are subsequently cast at large scale – up to six meters high – in bronze or steel. Schütte’s series Mann im Wind I-III (2018) that is on display in Bregenz, or the monumental bronze Mann mit Fahne (2018) are both testimony to his sculptural oeuvre.
For Thomas Schütte’s summer exhibition at Kunsthaus Bregenz, his works are not only being presented in KUB but also at various public spaces in Bregenz, including a steam snorting animal from patinized bronze on Karl Tizian Platz, the square directly in front of Kunsthaus Bregenz.
Biography
Thomas Schütte who has participated in documenta several times was born in 1954 in Oldenburg, Germany. He studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf where he was a student under Gerhard Richter and Fritz Schwegler. During the 1980s he was a guest professor at the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg.
His solo exhibitions have included ones at Haus der Kunst in Munich (2009), Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid (2010), Serpentine Gallery, London (2012), and Fondation Beyeler in Basel (2013). Schütte participated in the Venice Biennale in 2005, as well as at documenta 8 in 1987, documenta IX in 1992, and documenta X in 1997 in Kassel. Prior to his exhibition in Bregenz, his work will be on display at Monnaie de Paris, Paris (2019). In 2021 the Museum of Modern Art in New York is honoring him with a retrospective.
Thomas Schütte lives and works in Düsseldorf.