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Paul Suter |
On the occasion of the 80th birthday of the Swiss sculptor Paul Suter the Baukunst Galerie opens on Wednesday, the 21st of June 2006, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. a large retrospective. At the opening Dr. Gerhard Kolberg, curator at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, will give an introduction in Suter‘s artistic œuvre, exhibited at the Baukunst Galerie for the first time in 1998 and at last in 2001. As a consequent progression of the former exhibition beside large-sized iron sculptures a distinct selection of bronzes from different decades will be presented. Here early small-sized bronzes will be juxtaposed to the comparative large-sized bronzes of the last years. Furthermore monumental outdoor-sculptures and current works on paper will be shown. Parallel to the exhibition at the Baukunst Galerie at the 22nd of June 2006 the Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten in Marl will present a monumental outdoor-sculpture, which they recently received as a permanent loan of the artist.
Paul Suter, born in 1926 at Gränichen in Aargau, works as a free artist in Basel and Soubay in Jura since 1951. After his artistic education at the arts-and-crafts school in Basel from 1947 to 1951, Suter started to work with stone and bronze. At the beginning of the 60s he takes up to work out his cubistic-constructivistic sculptures in raw iron, which constantly changes its shape and colour depending on the different atmospheric conditions.
Suter’s iron sculptures are realized in his studios in Basel and Soubey according to small, fragile models of thin sheet plates. In an intuitive, spontanous working process he forms, cuts and solders the individual components with tools to a complex composition. According to these archetypes depending on the planned size the geometrical shapes are cut out of brand-new iron plates, which are curved, welded and screwed together.
The work with iron is characterized by the fact, that the result of every individual production step is visible at once, so that the artist is able to review it and proceed with his working process. Besides that the technique of welding allows a very free combination of different, sculptural shapes. This way flat, slight and broad, straight and curved iron modules are combined to constructions, which spirally develop into space. By their transparence they always include the space into their sculptural composition and apparently transform the heavy material in something light, almost agravic.
In contrast to the iron sculptures Suter’s bronzes, which he makes per the Cire-perdue-technique, are more centrical and compact. They seem to remain in an earlier stadium of developing into the space. The energy of extension is more concentrated – it seems to be fixed in the moment of explosion or break out. The artist moulds with his hands curved surfaces and bands out of self-casted wax-plates and conjoins them to wax models. These are covered with a compound of brick flour, gipsum and water and subsequently burned. This way a negativ shape comes into existence from which the cast-bronze is arisen. In opposite to the iron sculptures Suter’s mental concepts do not immediately assume a definite form – not until the end of the working process. A further difference is that the handcraft is a constitutive element: in the bronzes the handwriting of the artist is contained in the final product.
This connects the bronzes with Suter’s drawings and watercolours, which he creates physically and impulsively, rid of the requirements of statics. Parallel to the sculptural problem of a work which is developed in a three-dimensional space, Suter concentrates in his drawings on the creative possibilities of the two-dimensional area. As an antipole to the clear construction of his iron sculptures with their spacial definite coordinations, the forming of his drawings is pictorial, free and fluent.
Thus Suter combines in his bronzes central characteristics of his iron sculptures and his drawings. The common element of all of them is the graphic character of his opus. Paul Suters works are origin creations, not abstractions, and in this sense “concrete“. It is the energentic dynamic of his forming, which evokates in spite of the stilistic reduction associations with the organic world.
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