ART CITIES:N.York-Thomas Schütte

In Thomas Schütte’s universe, intimate watercolors, monumental figurative sculptures, vivid ceramics, architectural models, and fully realized buildings stand side-by-side as inquiries into aesthetics, history, and culture. This exhibition, the most comprehensive in the United States of Schütte’s career, explores the dazzling variety of his work and locates the through lines that can connect a bunker to a bust.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gagosian Archive

Thomas Schütte’s solo exhibition, “Major Sculptures,” features six works from his renowned “Frauen” series alongside the related piece, “Torso” (2005). This marks the largest presentation of this historic body of work in the United States to date, underscoring its pivotal role within the oeuvre of one of contemporary art’s most influential sculptors. Schütte’s multifaceted practice spans painting, drawing, printmaking, architectural model-making, and sculpture. Emerging after the rise of Conceptual art, he rejected its dismissal of the human figure, instead embracing it as a vehicle for exploring aesthetics and cultural critique. Frequently employing irony and a critical perspective toward artistic tradition, Schütte’s “Frauen” series (1998–2006) stands among his most ambitious and provocative works. The “Frauen” sculptures exhibit a wide range of poses, stylizations, and material expressions. Reclining, sitting, crouching, or extending off their table-like pedestals, the figures explore the human form through dynamic gestures and radical reinterpretations. These transformations challenge perceptions of the body, balancing between figuration and abstraction. Engaging with classical and neoclassical depictions of the reclining female nude, the series also dialogues with modernist reinterpretations by artists like Aristide Maillol, Henri Matisse, Henry Moore, Pablo Picasso, and Umberto Boccioni. Schütte’s works bridge figuration—rooted in human anatomy and agency—and abstraction, emphasizing the materiality and malleability of their mediums. The series began as a collection of 120 small glazed ceramic studies created between 1997 and 1999, depicting women on cuboid bases. These spontaneously modeled sketches served as prototypes for larger-scale works. Schütte selected specific figures to enlarge in polystyrene, refining their forms through layers of jute and plaster before casting them in metal. This process allowed for individuality in each sculpture, shaped by the artist’s treatment of flesh, clay manipulation, and eventual metal transmutation. The final works, rendered in bronze, steel, and aluminum, are mounted on custom steel plinths. Each material lends the sculptures a distinct character: the dark, rich tones of bronze; the weathered, rusted patina of steel that harmonizes with its plinth; and the luminous, reflective surfaces of lacquered aluminum. The titles—“Bronzefrau,” “Stahlfrau,” and “Aluminiumfrau”—emphasize the intrinsic connection between medium and form. “Torso,” a related polished bronze work at the same scale as the six exhibited “Frauen,” features a smooth, arcing figure adorned with bulging folds reminiscent of Schütte’s “Große Geister” series (1995–2004). Together, these sculptures encapsulate Schütte’s inventive exploration of the human figure, pushing the boundaries of sculptural tradition and material experimentation.

Photo: Thomas Schütte, Aluminiumfrau Nr. 8 (Aluminum Woman No. 8), 2001, Lacquered aluminum on steel table, 50 x 105 1/8 x 49 1/8 inches (127 x 267 x 124.8 cm), © 2025 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Photo: Fredrik Nilsen Studio, Courtesy Gagosian

Info: Gagosian, 522 West 21st Street, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 22/1-22/2/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gagosian.com/