Thomas Schütte was born in Oldenburg, Germany, in 1954, and studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where he received instruction from Gerhard Richter and Daniel Buren. Since the mid-1980s, figuration has been a central concern for the artist; his use of figure and representation of the body coincided with a general return to the themes of narrative and allegory in art in the 1980s—a period in which theatricality was a prevalent political, social, and cultural mode. Schütte’s works present what the artist has referred to as “the grammar of character,” as opposed to a mere representation of the psychological. The artist has had solo exhibitions at important venues such as the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Dia Center for the Arts, New York, and the Folkwang Museum, Essen. His work has been included in numerous Documenta exhibitions and in 2005 he was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the Venice Biennale. Schütte's work is part of the collections of the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, the Menil Collection, Houston, the Tate, London, the Museum of Modern Art, NY, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among many other venues.