Reconciling violence and ingenuity, intimacy and theatricality, Schütte’s ongoing examination of the human figure spans drawing, painting and sculpture

Unclassifiable and protean, German artist Thomas Schütte’s (born 1954) work takes an uneasy, ironic look at the human condition. Genealogies explores the circulation of motifs—mainly the human face—in Schütte’s works, transposed from one medium to another. Caricatured, sometimes abused and always in motion, Schütte’s anthropomorphic figures and busts come to life in clay, wax, ceramics, glass, steel or bronze, all anchored in his preparatory drawings and portrait sketches. This catalog analyzes the artist’s relationship between paper and sculpture, the historical iconography of his signature faces and his creative process. Many of the drawings and watercolors presented here have never been published before, giving the reader access to a more intimate facet of Schütte’s work.