In Vater Staat, dressed (2010), a stoic figure stands atop a smooth steel base, his body engulfed in cloth, tightly bound by a knotted cord, his weathered and imperious face set in pensive resolve. This expressively modelled work in bronze attests to the mastery of German artist Thomas Schütte, whose sculptural practice explores the complexities of the human condition, embodied in figures that appear at once stately and farcical, erudite yet flawed. Created the same year Schütte was awarded the Düsseldorf Art Prize, and five years after he received the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the 2005 Venice Biennale, Vater Staat, dressed exemplifies the sculptor’s virtuosic command of materiality and adept manipulation of scale.

The title of the work – Vater Staat, which translates as ‘Father State’ – implies that the subject is a despot. Yet, while the figure stands alone, elevated by his pedestal, his diminutive stature, aging countenance, and heavy, ligated garments – which ensnare his arms and hands – suggest a constrained authority, implying the inherent fallibility of patriarchal sovereignty. This sculpture is part of a series of works collectively titled ‘Vater Staat’, a motif which Schütte frequently revisited between 2007 and 2010, working in various sizes and media, including modelling clay, wax, steel and bronze. Among these works, Vater Staat, dressed is distinguished by the addition of fabric sourced from the artist’s own clothing that envelops the figure’s form.

Schütte began his exploration of bound figures in the early 1990s with his enduring series ‘United Enemies’, featuring pairs of humanoid forms with grotesque physiognomies, draped in fabric often taken from the artist’s discarded shirts or bathrobes. Conceived during Schütte’s residency in Rome in 1992, the series draws inspiration from the political turmoil in Italy at the time, when several heads of state were discredited and deposed for corruption, as well as from the classical portrait busts of Roman emperors he encountered in the Capitoline Museums. Schütte refers to his satirical pairings as ‘puppets’ or marionettes. Through its textile materiality and bound form, the solitary figure of Vater Staat, dressed evokes a similar puppetry and gestures towards the flaws of totalitarian state power, though Schütte has disavowed any explicit political intent.

In 2010, Schütte also produced large-scale iterations on this theme, executed entirely in bronze. These works have since been installed in public exhibition spaces worldwide, including The Art Institute of Chicago, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Punta della Dogana in Venice, Moderna Museet in Stockholm, and as part of the Serpentine’s acclaimed solo exhibition on the artist in London in 2012. The constrained subject of Vater Staat, dressed is reminiscent of Auguste Rodin’s Monument to Balzac (conceived in 1898), where the figure’s dense bronze cloak similarly serves as a substitute for the body. Drawing from the long European tradition of classical statuary, Schütte reinterprets the form, deliberately undermining the portrayal of the body as monolithic and sovereign. In this act of subversion, he offers a critique of the often unsettling veneration of certain values and politics that such monuments and memorials inherently uphold. ‘In my eyes’, Schütte has remarked, ‘the figurative tradition failed at the point when the artist had to create heroes in a democratic system’ (Conversation with James Lingwood, in Thomas Schütte, Phaidon, London, 1998, p.14).

Schütte’s ambiguous, polymorphic works offer an anxious reflection on the human condition, registering its contradictions across varied materials and extremes of scale. Combining the caricatural satire of his early, domestic-scale ‘United Enemies’ with the imposing grandeur of his public statuary, Vater Staat, dressed expresses the tense unity of strength and weakness, gravitas and levity.