Lillie

2012
Thomas Schütte

Set of 7 watercolours
38 x 28 cm each

For Thomas Schütte, It is a modest, personal exercise, like scales for a musician or a diary for a writer. It allows him to look more closely at ordinary objects and everyday life, rather than significant events. His watercolours take the form of self-portraits and portraits of friends, as well as depictions of animals, fruit and other objects. Here, the flower is treated in the style of a vanitas or still life, placed simply on the surface, as if on a grave. This almost romantic ode to nature evokes a sensitive appreciation of the passing of time.

Hangs

Inaugural Hang

From 27 October 2014 to 25 November 2014
Expressionist and contemplative works

From 17 December 2014 to 18 May 2015

Thomas Schütte creates many different types of work in his personal and uncategorisable “repertoire”, in the theatrical sense. Influenced by the teaching of Gerhard Richter, he moved away from the dominant minimal and conceptual forms to find an original way of translating his thoughts on representing the power and social responsibility of art in architectural models designed to be “models for thinking”.

The idea of the monument is central. In the 1980s, to indicate the scale of his models and installations, he began incorporating figures, which are indissociable from this political investment in space. The use of traditional techniques and materials such as clay, wax, ceramic, steel and bronze is accompanied by a re-examination of classical figurative themes: female nudes, standing figures. Schütte’s work takes on a more peaceful expression in his engravings, watercolours of flowers and portraits, some very personal. The questioning of scale, which stems from the monument, remains in his representation of people, who are larger than life, distant and self-absorbed.