WORKS

In Vivian Suter’s work, we see a physical and physiognomic reference to painting, colour and form. Her painting has a mind of its own – and this isn’t just a figure of speech. The works display a persistent will to conquer painting down to its most minute fibres and, in every element, to its own basic principles. In this long process of personal and emotional appropriation, and perhaps also of purification, ‘painting’ ultimately becomes the building block, the matter of a new, living organism, and one which seems to provoke that laconic remark at the end of a song by Vivian Suter: ‘Good grief, this is me.’

Bice Curiger
Extract from foreword to ‘Vivian Suter, Pictures 1981-1983
Art Museum of the Canton of Thurgau, Ittingen monastery