In Venice, Thomas Schütte models the passions of the soul

Of the approximately 200 works by German artist Thomas Schütte, born in 1954 and winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale in 2005, brought together at the Pointe de la Douane in Venice (Italy) by Jean-Marie Gallais and Camille Morineau, the curators of the exhibition entitled "Généalogies," around fifty, mainly sculptures, belong to François Pinault. He is known to be a powerful collector, but such a large number of works by the same artist is rare. Let's try to understand why.

He himself outlines an explanation in the preface to the catalogue, recounting his first visits to the studio more than twenty years ago: " I was struck by his irony and his way of assuming academic tradition; I was impressed by the special relationship he had with the idea of ​​death and its representations, and struck by his sensitivity to all the fragilities of the human soul." Thus in a recent series where he represents heroes, but heroes who cry...

To which Jean-Marie Gallais adds: "What interested François Pinault was that Schütte didn't listen to any fashion. He was certainly a student of Gerhard Richter at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf [he began by studying scenography there, which is still perceptible in the exhibition's hanging, to which he contributed significantly] , but at that time, sculpture was attracted by the conceptual, the minimal. He decided to refer to tradition, to the point of using techniques that were disappearing."

You have 81.93% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.