Thomas Schutte: Frauen

Dusseldorf-based artist Thomas Schutte (born 1954) is one of the most idiosyncratic of present-day artists, venturing to deploy techniques, genres and themes long thought passe–such as the sculpturally formed female figure–in permanent materials such as bronze, aluminum and steel. Schutte began his Frauen series toward the end of the 1990s and, while his first reclining nudes can be understood within the language of Classicism, his later, monumental figures with sawn-off limbs and various distortions–sometimes with bodies steamrolled flat or in tantalizing poses–resist all attempts at easy categorization. But Schutte’s brutal treatment of the female form is motivated less by a desire to shock than by a concern with the figure as a present-day testing ground for artistic expression, one that is frequently shot through with Schutte’s characteristic morbid humor. Frauen contains almost 200 color reproductions, along with texts by Andrea Bellini and Dieter Schwarz.