Artist statement

Short  vita

Robert Süess is a freelance artist, gallery owner, book author and life coach.
1950 Born in Lucerne/CH
1968 Studied typography, Lucerne School of Applied Arts, Zurich School of Art.
1980-2004 Studied painting at renowned art academies.
Since 1999 deepening in nude and abstract painting at summer academies and educational trips to Italy, Spain, Egypt, Greece, Japan and Finnish Lapland.
Numerous solo and group exhibitions.
Representations in galleries at home and abroad; participation in trade fairs and group exhibitions; works in private and public collections; since 2006 international activity as a lecturer in experimental painting at well-known academies in German-speaking Europe.

Artist  Statement

Since Robert Süess makes freedom the principle of his work, he is naturally also far from patronizing the viewer of his work as to what and how he should see. He understands his work as “absolute painting in the sense of an unrestricted pictorial art”. Ideologies of perception or interpretation are banished by him, he rather appeals to the experimental, to the liveliness of composition and color, to the power of the sensual-bodily. The undogmatic nature of his painting thus opens up a free space that the viewer may and should fill with his own interpretations. He is invited by the artist to embark on a journey of discovery – to immerse himself in the complexity, and thus to open up his own soul landscape as if in a mirror. According to the pulsating liveliness in his pictures, these become a mirror especially for a soul that knows flights of fancy as well as abysses, determination as well as ambivalences. For a soul that is rich and immeasurable.

For Robert Süess, too, the “exemplary” viewer can only be one who is prepared to enter into the much-invoked personal dialogue with the picture. This is all the more true for his work, as it is virtually overloaded with emotions, which the artist has to give to the viewer – exposed, dramatic as well as buried, superimposed ones, whose existence can only be guessed at in the silence and patience of contemplation. Only then does a painting by Robert Süess reveal to the viewer its whole history of sensuality, of emotion.

His art

It is the play of very opposing forces that define the work of Robert Süess. The viewer immediately feels a rare audacity, an expansive power – and at the same time he recognizes the playful, delicate gesture. In doing so, the artist invokes the pure pleasure of creating – which must always allow for destruction, the experimental, the vibrancy of composition and color, the power of the sensual and corporeal. High-class use of materials guarantees an enormous density in his works: the superficially present, the powerfully dominant is given just as much space as the fragile, semi-transparent, fragmentary and enigmatic. Thus, in the work of Robert Süess, unambiguity is replaced by the admission of contradictions and the richness of a life that also surrenders to the deepest emotions.

The person

Those who first see Robert Süess sitting in front of them, in his serene calm and composure, will undoubtedly be surprised as soon as they experience him in the studio for the first time. It is a spectacle of a special kind as soon as he devotes himself to the canvas. No calculation, no hesitation, no half-heartedness. This audacity of his artistic expression, this expansive power, will be witnessed by anyone who has ever been able to observe him in a creative process. Both his seemingly archaic power and his love of experimentation correspond to a trait of the artist: Robert Süess is generous. He draws from abundance, from his inner wealth, he gives himself to the canvas, he gives himself away – in the form of the energetic gesture and in the lavish use of the most diverse materials.