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Lot Essay
‘There are figures that are exclamation marks—and others that are question marks’ (Thomas Schütte)
Thomas Schütte’s monumental Großer Frauenkopf (Large Female Head) (2021-2024) defies the conventions of figurative sculpture. Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner, it is a colossal bronze bust of a woman placed on a gleaming steel plinth. While busts tend to feature subjects with open eyes, hers are closed as if in reverie. Her facial expression is enigmatic. The head has been patinated to a mahogany sheen. Her hair has a softness that belies its heavy, metallic substance; her features emerge from its amorphous mass as in the waxen sculptures of Medardo Rosso. A ceramic version of the same head, pale green like oxidised bronze, is currently on display at Thomas Schütte: Genealogies, a major retrospective exhibition at the Punta della Dogana in Venice, for which it features as the cover image on the exhibition’s catalogue.
The plinth is an integral part of the work. It elevates the oversized bust to the height of the beholder, forcing them to view her face to face. The coldness of its steel form contrasts with the warmth of the head’s bronze. It places her on a pedestal, but it also holds her up for inquisition. ‘Set apart on a platform,’ writes Penelope Curtis of Schütte’s earlier work, ‘these figures seemed to be both in the dock and on the podium’ (P. Curtis, ‘Reclining Sculpture’, in Thomas Schütte: Hindsight, exh. cat. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid 2009, p. 54). In this sense Großer Frauenkopf follows the lineage of Schütte’s platformed series of bronze, steel and aluminium Frauen sculptures (1999-2009), which investigate and distort the female nude.
Schütte is one of Germany’s leading contemporary artists. He has participated three times in documenta, and was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Schütte studied at the prestigious Kunstakademie Düsseldorf between 1973 and 1981 under Gerhard Richter and Daniel Buren, at a time when the school was a seedbed for new approaches to art. His international breakthrough came with a 1987 solo presentation at New York’s Marian Goodman Gallery, which included drawings of a futuristic dwelling and a sculpture of the same building after an earthquake. ‘What are we looking at?’, wrote Michael Brenson at the time. ‘Is it architecture, sculpture or design? Is it a blueprint for the future or a commemoration of something past?’ (M. Brenson, ‘Review: Thomas Schütte', The New York Times, 17 March 1989).
Schütte’s practice, which has grown to encompass architectural models, large-scale public sculpture and the design of whole buildings, constantly asks these questions. Großer Frauenkopf is no exception. It might be a tender portrait of a real person or an embodied concept, a memento or a monument. Schütte plays with the historical tradition of bronze portrait sculpture as epitomised by Auguste Rodin, while smoothing his subject’s features so that it alludes to the spareness of post-war abstract sculpture. Dieter Schwarz writes that ‘Schütte’s figures have more to do with the developments of 1960s sculpture than meets the eye at first glance, for he uses space in a variety of ways—as an abstract design unit that he fills with real elements, and at the same time as a stage on which the real transitions into the fictional’ (D. Schwarz, ‘Portraits, Models and Skulpturenhalle’, in Thomas Schutte, exh. cat. Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz 2019, p. 16). Großer Frauenkopf is at once a penetrating spatial experiment and a captivating, sphinxlike work of figurative intrigue.
Thomas Schütte’s monumental Großer Frauenkopf (Large Female Head) (2021-2024) defies the conventions of figurative sculpture. Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner, it is a colossal bronze bust of a woman placed on a gleaming steel plinth. While busts tend to feature subjects with open eyes, hers are closed as if in reverie. Her facial expression is enigmatic. The head has been patinated to a mahogany sheen. Her hair has a softness that belies its heavy, metallic substance; her features emerge from its amorphous mass as in the waxen sculptures of Medardo Rosso. A ceramic version of the same head, pale green like oxidised bronze, is currently on display at Thomas Schütte: Genealogies, a major retrospective exhibition at the Punta della Dogana in Venice, for which it features as the cover image on the exhibition’s catalogue.
The plinth is an integral part of the work. It elevates the oversized bust to the height of the beholder, forcing them to view her face to face. The coldness of its steel form contrasts with the warmth of the head’s bronze. It places her on a pedestal, but it also holds her up for inquisition. ‘Set apart on a platform,’ writes Penelope Curtis of Schütte’s earlier work, ‘these figures seemed to be both in the dock and on the podium’ (P. Curtis, ‘Reclining Sculpture’, in Thomas Schütte: Hindsight, exh. cat. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid 2009, p. 54). In this sense Großer Frauenkopf follows the lineage of Schütte’s platformed series of bronze, steel and aluminium Frauen sculptures (1999-2009), which investigate and distort the female nude.
Schütte is one of Germany’s leading contemporary artists. He has participated three times in documenta, and was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Schütte studied at the prestigious Kunstakademie Düsseldorf between 1973 and 1981 under Gerhard Richter and Daniel Buren, at a time when the school was a seedbed for new approaches to art. His international breakthrough came with a 1987 solo presentation at New York’s Marian Goodman Gallery, which included drawings of a futuristic dwelling and a sculpture of the same building after an earthquake. ‘What are we looking at?’, wrote Michael Brenson at the time. ‘Is it architecture, sculpture or design? Is it a blueprint for the future or a commemoration of something past?’ (M. Brenson, ‘Review: Thomas Schütte', The New York Times, 17 March 1989).
Schütte’s practice, which has grown to encompass architectural models, large-scale public sculpture and the design of whole buildings, constantly asks these questions. Großer Frauenkopf is no exception. It might be a tender portrait of a real person or an embodied concept, a memento or a monument. Schütte plays with the historical tradition of bronze portrait sculpture as epitomised by Auguste Rodin, while smoothing his subject’s features so that it alludes to the spareness of post-war abstract sculpture. Dieter Schwarz writes that ‘Schütte’s figures have more to do with the developments of 1960s sculpture than meets the eye at first glance, for he uses space in a variety of ways—as an abstract design unit that he fills with real elements, and at the same time as a stage on which the real transitions into the fictional’ (D. Schwarz, ‘Portraits, Models and Skulpturenhalle’, in Thomas Schutte, exh. cat. Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz 2019, p. 16). Großer Frauenkopf is at once a penetrating spatial experiment and a captivating, sphinxlike work of figurative intrigue.