PETER SCHUMANN: KING SOLOMON, THE GREAT LOVE POET

Given BigTown Gallery’s stated mission to showcase artists deeply dedicated in exploring what fine art means as creation and experience, it is fitting that the work of Peter Schumann, founder of the legendary Bread and Puppet Theater, be featured this fall. Gallery owner Anni Mackay has been a longtime admirer of her fellow Vermonter’s collaborative work that uses art as a tool to transform individual energy and rage against political injustice into public spectacle—often tinged with dark humor and the absurd.

Schumann was born in Silesia (now Poland) in 1934. He was a sculptor and dancer before moving to New York City where he initiated the first iteration of Bread and Puppet Theater in 1963. It took 50 years of international touring, a stint as artist-in-residence at Goddard, a move to Glover, VT, countless parades, protests and circus performances before he was offered his first solo museum exhibition, in 2013, The Shatterer, at New York City’s Queens Museum. Until then, his body of work, as an individual artist, had been largely unseen. Curator Jonathan Berger called him “one of the most independent, prolific and complex artists of our time.”

Peter Schumann, The Shatterer, 2013, papier-mâché, paint and cloth, dimensions variable. Photo: Queens Museum of Art.

Schumann’s visionary, occasionally surreal work includes handmade books, musical lectures, machines, philosophical diagrams, paintings and the iconic large-scale papier-mâché sculptures that were sized to compete with the skyscrapers that dominate the streets of New York. The Bread and Puppet Theater is both the culmination of his life’s work as well as the continuation of his unique sensibility to reach out and effectively invite like-minded souls to join him.

Tens of thousands of people have experienced Bread and Puppet over the years and still visit the home base in Glover throughout the summer where Schumann continues to bake and serve his life-sustaining bread after each Sunday’s performance. The energy generated by Bread and Puppet can seem ephemeral yet the artwork created by that energy, the artifacts left as evidence, come from the mind and hand of Schumann. Thanks to BigTown Gallery for providing a platform for us to discover, in a more contemplative environment, this artist who has surprised and motivated a whole new generation.