THOMAS SCHÜTTE | Großer Geist Nr. 13

Bernier/Eliades Gallery, Athens
CAP Collection (acquired from the above in 1999)
François Pinault, Paris
Peter Freeman, Inc., New york
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Athens, Bernier/Eliades Gallery, Thomas Schütte, January - February 1999
Venice, Palazzo Grassi, Mapping the Studio: Artists from the François Pinault Collection, June 2009 - April 2011, pp. 280-281, illustrated in color (incorrectly titled Grosse Geister Nr. 14)
Venice, Palazzo Grassi, Il Mondo vi appartiene / Le monde vous appartient / The World Belongs to You, June 2011 - February 2012, p. 320, illustrated in color (incorrectly titled Grosse Geister Nr. 9)
Rennes, Couvent des Jacobins / Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes, Debout!, June - September 2018, p. 169, illustrated in color (installed at Palazzo Grassi), p. 170, illustrated in color

Arlène Bonnant, CAP Collection, Dublin, 2005, p. 10, illustrated in color (in installation), and p. 252, illustrated in color (incorrectly titled Großer Geist Nr. 14)

Thomas Schütte’s monumental and enigmatic Großer Geist Nr. 13 from 1998 commands a presence exemplary of the artist’s most seductive explorations of anthropomorphic form in aluminum. A stunning model of Schütte’s iconic Große Geister series, which contains seventeen aluminum figures—each holding its own, distinctly arresting pose—the present work offers an early and rare example of one of the artist’s most revered bodies of work; other figures from the series, which Schütte executed between 1996 and 2004, reside in prestigious international collections including, among others, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in Germany. Testifying to its significance, the present work was previously held in the illustrious CAP Collection and, subsequently, François Pinault’s esteemed personal collection. Boldly testing the limits of his chosen material and provocatively riffing on the storied genre of figurative sculpture, Schütte delves into fundamental philosophical questions about the relationship between “man and animal, man and man, man and light, [and] space and colour.” (the artist in Julian Heynen, James Lingwood and Angela Vettese, Thomas Schütte, London, 1998, p. 25) Großer Geist Nr. 13 arrests viewers with its imperceptible gaze, its sleek and reflective sheen, and its dramatic scale, eliciting intensive meditation on the human condition. Gazing down from a towering height, the molten silhouette of Großer Geist Nr. 13 leans ever so slightly forward, its left arm raised in salute as though acknowledging the viewer’s watchful presence. Its surface gleams, reflecting the transient changes of light in its surroundings and reflecting the viewer’s own, undulating image in its mirror-like shine. Without identifying facial features, Großer Geist Nr. 13 is rendered intriguingly anonymous, exuding an air of mysterious ambiguity that invites imagined narratives. Describing the haunting and elusive presence of the Große Geister, German collector Friedrich Christian Flick writes: “The figures and their faces acquire contours, without it being possible to say what they actually are: good or evil spirits, wondering or knowing.” (Ulrich Loock, Thomas Schütte, Berlin, 2004, p. 7)

The apparent fluidity of the metallic form serves as testament to Schütte’s extraordinary technical virtuosity; within the exacting formal vernacular of his aluminum medium, he forges a seemingly elastic creature who appears both mobile and capable of interaction. Großer Geist Nr. 13’s limbs consist of luscious, smooth rolls that invoke the desire to touch. To create his extraordinary figures, the artist first immerses skeins of twisted wax cords—typically used in aircraft construction—in liquid wax, stabilizing and unifying the sculpture’s essential structure; only then does he cast the resulting spiral forms in the gleaming aluminum of the outer coating. Schütte’s innovative approach to creating the Geister falls in line with his mode of production overall: “Schütte’s usual approach is to...pursue often unusual, unexpected, and unaccustomed strategies.” (Ulrich Loock, Thomas Schütte, Berlin, 2004, p. 9) Within the present work, Schütte luxuriates in the material capacities of aluminum: both its malleability, which allows for the igneous elegance of his figures, and its strength, which allows him to work on a colossal scale.

Despite its contemporary means of production, Großer Geist Nr. 13 contains a deep awareness of the history of sculpture. Only four years before initiating the Große Geister series, Schütte travelled to Rome to study classical sculpture; the present work’s contrapposto-like stance reveals his particular enchantment with ancient masterpieces. Schütte’s deft fusion of figuration and abstraction links the present work with Modernist efforts to embody motion through abstracted form; Umberto Boccioni’s 1913 sculpture Unique Forms of Continuity in Space likewise presents a humanoid creature lunging forward, exuding a similar sense of dynamic movement. Simultaneously, Großer Geist Nr. 13’s massive scale contains the presence of such Minimalist objects as Robert Morris's large-scale L-Beams, which likewise engage viewers upon a phenomenological plane. In Großer Geist Nr. 13, Schütte revels in the evolution of his artistic medium, translating its history into an ingenious form of its time.

At once otherworldly and intensely tangible, Großer Geist Nr. 13 defies simple understanding, demonstrating the mystique of the artist’s oeuvre. Indeed, Schütte famously refuses to denote specific meaning to his sculptures—as he states, to “cast them into words or philosophy.” (the artist in Julian Heynen, James Lingwood and Angela Vettese, eds., Thomas Schütte, London 1998, p. 25) Instead, Schütte invites his viewers to ponder Großer Geist Nr. 13 for themselves, encouraging a profound reflection on their place within the surrounding environment, and the inherent limits of human experience.