Artist statement

Short  vita

Robert Süess, freelance artist and book author.
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, Finnish Lapland and Yukon/Alaska.
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 I make freedom the principle of my creation, it is naturally also far from me to patronize the viewer of my work, what and how he should see. I understand my work as “absolute painting in the sense of an unrestricted pictorial art”. Ideologies of perception or interpretation are banished by me, I rather appeal to the experimental, to the liveliness of composition and color, to the power of the sensual-bodily. The undogmatic nature of my painting thus opens up a free space that the viewer may and should fill with his own interpretations. He is invited by me to embark on a journey of discovery – to dive into the complexity, and thus to open up their own soul landscape as in a mirror. According to the pulsating liveliness in my pictures, these become a mirror especially for my soul, which knows flights of fancy as well as abysses, determination equally as ambivalences. For a soul that is rich and immeasurable.

The “exemplary” viewer for me, too, can therefore only be one who is prepared to enter into the much-invoked personal dialogue with the picture. This applies to my work all the more, as it is virtually overloaded with emotions, which I have to give the viewer – exposed, dramatic as well as buried, superimposed, whose existence can only be guessed in the silence and patience of contemplation. Only then does a picture of mine reveal to the viewer its whole story of sensuality, of emotion, of feeling.

My art

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

About  the person

Those who first see me sitting in front of them in my serene calm and composure will undoubtedly be surprised as soon as they experience me in the studio for the first time. It is a spectacle of a special kind as soon as I devote myself to the canvas. No calculation, no hesitation, no half-heartedness. This audacity of my artistic expression, this sprawling power will testify to anyone who has ever been able to observe me in a creative process. Both my archaic-seeming power and my love of experimentation correspond to one trait: I am generous. I draw from abundance, from my inner wealth, I give myself to the canvas, I give myself away – in the form of the energetic gesture and in the lavish use of the most diverse materials.