NIKE NEW ART IN EUROPE NO 57 (1997)
Autor: Peter Wittenberg
colour-sound harmonies

For Gisela Schuto, the picture is an adventure, an incalculable risk. Her emotions make the decisions during the work process, which means that there must certainly be work phases over and over again in which the picture paints itself, so to speak. That is to say the painter obeys it. To a rhythm of building up and teaming down, the picture emerges.
What is a picture? The first decision for an artist who wants to make a picture is the format: what height, what width? You could almost imagine that the rectangle that towers up or lies broadly fascinates and excites the artist all by itself, even before she has found the object for the picture for it - rather like how a poet may feel desire to write a sonnet or a short story.
Through the decision about the format, the field, on which the future composition will develop is marked out. Here, it has the dimensions 55 x 59 cm. This, then is the force field of colours and forms which with Schuto, can be a drama or a piece of harmony. Over the course of the years, she has worked out a number of favourite formats; Schuto chose them well - so the dimensions are, so to speak, fitting for her idea.
If the viewer would like to approach the works illustrated here, he cannot walk along paths that have already been trodden and so amass once more all the pre-requisites for this unexpected and radical step towards the picture, that are worth mentioning, Of that I am convinced and Gisela Schuto would also advise against it, because in the meantime she has thrown off the baggage that she has carried so patiently.
These pictures are no longer the inevitable consequence of preliminary efforts - although they definitely took place; they are truly her very own feelings and her experiences of many years standing which she now conveys to the picture. Schuto has walked through three levels in her works, that of an illusionistic objectivity based on the traditions of Expressionism, that of a new reality that depicts itself materially in the picture and, finally that of a power that is visually recalled and lies in the picture itself - and it is this third level that comes closest to Gisela Schuto´s inner self. Schuto has advanced beyond the objectivity and the materiality that she inspired and manipulated herself, to the picture itself, which formed the basis of all of her earlier reflections. If she previously (and perhaps sub-consciously) took and profited from the picture, so, in her current works, she is now giving her experiences back to the picture.
It is pointless to seek proofs in terms of art history, content or current trends in these pictures. Her vision does not define the picture, but rather the picture itself compels the stopping or the correcting of activities that are no longer useful for the vision. Quite regardless of whatever we nowadays expect from a picture and demand of it and force upon it, an artist is here attempting, after long and painful experiences, to realise her concept of picture that is possible today. The viewer does not only register the picture's elements as an optical attraction, bur he also senses the material of the surface, which offers a new stimulation each time it is scanned by the eye, so that even the procedure of the act of creation, he production of the picture can be traced. The creative process of the artist can also be described in the same way as the eye experiences the picture; this does not only apply to the works under discussion. After all these reflections, this does not result in the build-up of a pre-determined or even pre-considered composition; rather, the shaping changes according to the respective concept, as Schuto reacts to the work she has just completed. Harnessed by intuitive, artistic calculation, she develops the form out of the colour, applying layer upon layer until it becomes a powerful pictorial order. This process, in which the lower paint foundation is never completely covered by the upper layer, implies a three-dimensionality, which is, however, specific only to the picture and has little to do with outer reality with physical space that can be experienced. Rather, these are colour spaces which are kept floating in the air by the transparent foundation. The impact zone of the picture is determined by inner impressions of the real world.
Understanding and recognising does not follow on an intellectual basis, but in a process of sensory mastering triggered quite autonomously by the picture. So there emerge unrealistic, sensitively composed colour spaces and structures, aggressive in their gesture and considered in a balanced way. Everything is understood elementally, so embodying the respective energy potential, which intensifies in mutual, complementary fashion in the colour zones.
Schuto often carries out the coloration within the spectrum of red, yellow, green and blue, while excluding violet. The artist uses red less often her "favourite paintings are the blue ones", she also rates the colour green highly and I must add that the red picture assumes a particular position within her work.
As a rule, the tone of the picture is defined by a single colour - they are blue, green, yellow or red paintings. In general, though, one should not allow oneself to be deceived by the colour tone that first leaps to the eye, in the sense that it really were only a question of one, two or three colours. Schuto´s paintings consist of a texture, into which the dominating colours are interwoven with countless shade modulations.
With these remarks, we are referring to the musicality in her works. For Schuto, it is a question of colour-sound harmonies that should step beyond a mere coloured representation of things. The aim is the closely inter-linked, compositional correlation of the individual pictorial forms. The concept of modelling belongs to the field of fine arts. In painting, it depicts the plastic moulding of an object, particularly with the help of light and shadow. Modulating on the other hand, is a team from music. It describes the transition of one key into the next, the transfer of harmonies, in which individual tones are retained and only a single one is changed. In this way, the chord is a member of a different, tonal inter-relation and receives a new function through this artistic modulation.
Schuto creates coloured values of detachment and, in this way, allows a vibrating, mobile, pictorial body to emerge.
The joy in this newly-discovered painting is stunningly perceptible, beyond the awareness of the objective motivations of the artist Gisela Schuto, abstract pictures of great originality (that still show concreteness in the materiality of their colours) have emerged which can re-awaken our capacity for emotion - hopefully assuming that it still survives. Max Beckmann characterises this artistic-programmatic made of action as follows: " I must search for the truth with my eyes and with a dreadful, vigorous sensuousness. I emphasise the eyes in particular, because nothing could be more laughable and trivial than a cerebral view of the world without the frightening furore of the senses for every form of beauty and ugliness in the visible realm." (Max Beckmann - "About my painting", 1938).