| Main centres: | 1-3 business days |
| Regional areas: | 3-4 business days |
| Remote areas: | 3-5 business days |
Published in conjunction with the exhibition, Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg, 2015.
Contributions include:
"Of Relics, Icons and Idols: The carved figures of Peter Schütz" by Walter Oltmann
"The Wits Art Museum Collections: Tracing African influences in the work of Peter Schütz" by Fiona Rankin-Smith.
Sculptor Peter Schütz was born in Germany in 1942. He won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 1984, the Cape Town Triennial Gold Medal in 1988, and represented South Africa in Chile and in Morocco at official presentations. He taught at the Technikon Natal and the University of the Witwatersrand, and maintained sculpture studios at Wits and in KwaZulu-Natal. He died in 2008.
Schütz was a leading contemporary South African sculptor. He was born in Germany, and in the 1950s immigrated with his family to the Kwa-Zulu Natal province of South Africa. Schütz completed his initial training at the Natal Technikon, before graduating with his MFA from the University of Natal. Outside of his artistic practice, Schütz devoted much of his life to teaching, having worked both at the Natal Technikon, and at the University of the Witwatersrand where he lectured for almost twenty years.
Schützs oeuvre is comprised primarily of sculptural works. He also produced several bodies of print editions, often in collaboration with the Caversham Press. Schützs subject matter is broad, ranging from religious iconography to domestic scenes and landscapes depicting figures and objects from the sacred to the everyday. A common thread knitting these together is the artists wit and wisdom, as well as his commitment to creating works of art that are uniquely African. Schützs preferred medium was jelutong, a soft, light-coloured Indonesian wood. A master woodworker, his sculptures are meticulously carved and sanded, typically painted in boldly coloured oils.
In 1984, Schütz was selected as the winner of the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award, and in 1988, he was the recipient of a Cape Town Triennial Gold Medal. Schütz was commissioned by the Durban Art Gallery in 1999 to create Durban Icon a two-metre-high work in wood which remains one of the artists seminal works. In 2015, the Wits Art Museum hosted An Eye on the World, a survey exhibition of the artists career. Schützs idiosyncratic works are held in a number of important collections including the Johannesburg Art Gallery and the Chase Manhattan Bank collection, New York.
