Weeping women Nr III

All of Thomas Schütte’s sculpture work is figurative, revealing his concern for the human condition. The German artist, born in 1954, addresses crucial topics such as power, memory, the role of art, beauty, economic greed, death, beauty and melancholy.

Since 2009, he has produced a series of sculptures entitled the Weeping Women, bronze fountains showing the face of a crying woman, an archetypal figure in the history of art. Thomas Schütte reduces the facial features in a crude and graphic way, with no decoration except the striated patterns that punctuate the surface. The minimal, stylised aesthetic of their appearance recalls certain forms of primal art such as African masks and statuettes. Water runs from the orifice of the mouth to the lower part of the sculpture that acts as a basin.

The Pinault Collection was the first to show the work Weeping Woman No. III (2011) by Thomas Schütte in 2011 at the Punta della Dogana at the "Eloge du Doute" (“In Praise of Doubt”) exhibition.