Schiller's phrase about the playing man fits Zurich's Thomas Riederer with the exotic-sounding artist's name Santhori perfectly. He was a picture maker until 1971. In 1990, the "Santhori" era began with its unmistakable colour concept "United Colours of Santhori". From now on, he uses the four colours red, blue, yellow and green (plus black and white) for all his artworks without exception.

Santhori loves to visit other countries and get to know the local people and their culture. So he lived with his wife Ursula and children for two years in the south of France on a ship. Since 1991 he has lived with his family in Bad Zurzach and opened his first studio in a former kindergarten. The patches of red, blue, yellow and green merge into surfaces and finally into the fake tin policeman with which Santhori covered the flashing light box on Zurich's Walcheplatz some time ago, putting it out of action for a short time.

About his art, Santhori once said: "various art forms play a role in my work. I move between figuration and fantastic worlds. In my sculptures, I want to express myself playfully with colours, shapes and figures." Santhori is a "homo ludens" in the best sense of the word, having retained his naïve childlike joy of play. He paints intuitively and out of inner joy. In conversations, he repeatedly emphasises that art should be experienced and felt like good food and drink. Santhori discovers his individual qualities in play and, through the experiences he makes, becomes the dazzling personality that is inherent in him.

Play makes it possible to experience and at the same time transcend the constraints of the external world. Even in early childhood, imaginative play serves to represent inner experience. In narrative "play", human beings supplement their pragmatic experiences with the dimension of an imaginative search for meaning.

Santhori loves and practices transgressing boundaries. For example, through his colourful skulls in the park: in his baroque work, sinister death symbolism repeatedly appears alongside the play with traditional symbols and forms, even if the playful handling of the material softens the brutal effect of the naturalistically used skulls. Santhori's works often oscillate between demons, fright monsters, puffed-up popanze and ironic figurations, between the satanic and the clownish. And what's more: the oppressive fears can often only be endured and banished thanks to the means of humour and the grotesque-comical.