Thomas Schutte is a contemporary artist from Germany. He works in a variety of media, from small figurative sculptures to large architectural installations. Schutte’s artworks also include watercolours, banners, photographs, monuments and flags. His creative output exhibits a preoccupation with human existence alongside everyday cultural, social, and political issues. Figuration often forms the focal point of his artistic expression. He is well known for his monumental work entitled Large Ghosts. This comprises three monumental figures cast in aluminium, which explore the human figure’s potential for expression.
In the early 2000s, he explored this theme again on a small scale with the work entitle Grosse Geister. This involved a series of sculptures of small men stuck in mud. Each individual figure was unique, and they were made in three editions, with each edition having its own medium of steel, aluminium or polished bronze. In 2009, Schutte’s six-metre bronze sculpture entitled Mann im Matsch was placed in the town of Oldenburg, where he was born in 1954. His art has appeared in exhibitions throughout Europe and America, including solo exhibitions at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and the Museo de Arte Renia Sofia Institute in Spain. Thomas Schutte lives and works in Düsseldorf.
