Agenda

In 1979, the Neuchâtel Museum of Art and History (le Musée d’art et d’histoire de Neuchâtel) received a significant donation from James Adolphe Yvan Amez-Droz (1888-1976).  Yvan Amez-Droz built up a collection of paintings, drawings, prints, books and objets d’art in Paris, where he was based. By donating the modern part of this collection, the art lover wishes to show his affection for Neuchâtel, his family’s birthplace.

Named “The Yvan and Hélène Amez-Droz Bequest” by the donor’s wishes to associate his name with that of his sister, the collection comprises 69 works: 45 paintings, 18 drawings, two monotypes, and four sculptures. It combines a range of French artists from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from open-air painting to the early École de Paris.

The collection centres on the famous Impressionist artists Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, and Auguste Renoir. The exhibition also highlights the fertile artistic period that preceded the avant-garde movements of the early 20th century.  It includes works by representatives of realism (Gustave Courbet) and art nouveau, such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

In the context of its permanent exhibition, the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern also focuses thematically on the avant-garde journals of the early 20th century. With some 150 exhibits, attention is devoted to the journal as an artistic field of experimentation.

These journals became an important medium in art – from Futurism via Dadaism to Surrealism and beyond.

The artistic ‘avant-garde’ phenomenon evolved in Europe in the 1910s. Between 1910 and 1933, numerous journals were published. They presented a vision of art and society and drew attention to the artists.

Today, these journals with titles such as MERZ, Cabaret Voltaire, Sturm, Kentiku Sekai and Habitat are among the most significant documents of global modernism. Their often extremely innovative design is particularly fascinating: many avant-garde journals used design and typography as an opportunity to make radical ideas and concepts visually accessible.

They picked up expressive typefaces, colours, and forms and worked with exciting combinations of text and images to signal dynamism and the break with tradition. This makes them forerunners of modern visual communication and advertising design, which works with the same principles.

Another innovation was that many avant-garde journals were published multilingually or contained content in different languages. This multilingualism reflects the world of many representatives of modern art who lived in exile or were migrants. Avant-garde-minded artists often had global networks and forged and nurtured alliances across national borders.

Contemporary and 18th-century art mingle with paper aristocratic ghosts visiting the court of Frederick II (1712-1786), King of Prussia and Prince of Neuchâtel.

Frederick Beck, Friedrich II., 1788. Private collection

At Château de Nyon, the paper figures are arranged in a scenography by the artist Isabelle de Borchgrave (1946-2024). She often got her inspiration from court portraits in Berlin and Versailles, made from porcelain and the interiors of palaces.

The link between Berlin and Nyon is the porcelain. Jakob Dortu, who founded the porcelain factory in Nyon in 1781, gained his experience at the Berlin factory, which King Frederick II had founded.

Moreover, the museum’s collection includes Meissen porcelain with chinoiserie decorations prominently featured in the exhibition.

Impressions of the exhibition

fashion around 1780

The three-country region inspired cartoonist Peter Gaymann to create new cartoons, drawings, and objects.

In addition to his well-known chickens, he also lets pigs, women, men, children and cats look across the borders, allowing us to discover not only animal and human abysses but also unexpected similarities, differences, clichés and other truths from all areas of life in France, Switzerland and Germany.

Bizarre, surprising, and rarely shown exhibits from the Dreiländermuseum (Three Countries Museum) collection complement the show.

The exhibition ‘Typically Dreiland’ is a collaboration between the Dreiländermuseum and Baaske Cartoons, Müllheim in Markgräflerland.

The recently opened exhibition ‘Matisse—Einladung zur Reise’ at the Fondation Beyeler features more than 70 important works from renowned European and American museums and private collections. It focuses on the development and diversity of Henri Matisse’s pioneering oeuvre (1869-1954).

Based on the famous 1857 poem ‘l’ invitation au voyage’ by Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), the exhibition invites visitors on a journey through Matisse’s unique oeuvre and life. The artist made many journeys, both in art and in his life.

During his explorations of countries such as Italy, Spain, Morocco, and Tahiti, the French artist constantly drew inspiration from nature and the art of other cultures.

The retrospective covers all the French artist’s creative phases and presents an unmistakable interplay of painting, drawing and sculpture.

The Antikenmuseum Basel and Sammlung Ludwig has a collection of Greek ceramics known far beyond their borders for their quality and diversity.

Three new permanent exhibitions are presented in a new scenography, and two new audio tours show the collection’s richness in a varied and interactive way. In addition, all of the Museum’s collections (Roman and Oriental) will be open to the public simultaneously.

Permanent Exhibition 1: Treasures from the collection and their stories

This new permanent exhibition is dedicated to the history of the Museum, which was founded in 1961 and opened in 1966.

New permanent exhibition ‘Treasures from the collection and their history’ (Schätze der Sammlung und ihre Geschichten). © Ruedi Habegger, Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig

Permanent exhibition 2: The world of the Etruscans

In six rooms, this permanent exhibition gives a comprehensive picture of this remarkable culture, to which artfully decorated ceramics, filigree jewellery, weapons and everyday objects bear witness.

The exhibition focuses particularly on the social and cultural changes that resulted from the people’s intensive contact with other cultures in the ancient Mediterranean.

New permanent exhibition ‘World of the Etruscans’ (Welt der Etrusker). © Ruedi Habegger, Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig

Permanent exhibition 3: How a Greek masterpiece was made

Greek ceramics fascinate with their beautiful forms and elaborate decorations. They give insight into the life, customs, and beliefs of a past civilisation that nevertheless produced the most fundamental achievements of the West: dialogue, music, the Olympic Games, art, education, science, philosophy, sport, literature, theatre, and the world’s first (direct) democracy.

The new didactic and interactive exhibition shows the diversity of Greek vases and vividly illustrates their production and use.

New permanent exhibition ‘How a Greek masterpiece was made’(Wie ein Meisterwerk entsteht) © Ruedi Habegger, Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig

The museum presents a new section of its permanent exhibition on ‘The textile industry in the Canton of Glarus’ (Glarner Textildruck). This section tells the more than 250-year history of this vital industry.

Visitors get to know this cultural heritage and the enormous power of innovation that characterised the Glarus region (and Switzerland) early on, the variety of beautiful, high-quality textile products and the (visionary) improvement of working conditions, with the approval of the Landsgemeinde.

In the late 18th century, the textile industry in several regions characterised the dynamic economic and social history of the Swiss Confederation.

This development reached its peak around 1860. The centre of gravity was in eastern and south-eastern Switzerland, in the triangle of Zurich, Glarus, and St Gallen, with offshoots in the cantons of Aargau and Thurgau and northwestern Switzerland, with Basel as its centre.

Thus, fabric printing in the canton of Glarus, silk ribbon weaving in the canton of Basel and embroidery in the canton of St Gallen were key to the speed of industrialisation in Switzerland in the 19th century.

The rapid rise of the Glarus textile printing industry from the mid-18th century played an important role in this context.

1848 and 1849 were uncertain years for the new Swiss Confederation. The Sonderbund War of 1847, the tensions between the kingdom of Prussia about Neuchâtel and the new constitution of 1848 were decisive events in the old Confederation of 25 sovereign cantons and their mostly different historical, religious, political, linguistic and geographical orientations.

This first democratic state (measured by the standards of the time) on the European continent was, so to speak, the first European Union. The neighbouring regions of Switzerland were much more turbulent in those years. Uprisings and revolutions in France (Habsburg), Italy, Austria and Germany (the German Confederation) ended in military violence and a new absolutism.

Thousands of citizens found refuge in Switzerland, much against the will of the rulers in the neighbouring countries. The Austrian Chancellor Klemens von Metternich (1773-1859) even threatened an invasion!

The Grand Duchy of Baden (1806-1918) was even one of the most important revolutionary territories in the German Confederation. Following the exhibition in the Dreiländermuseum in Lörrach, the museum in Rastatt is now presenting an exhibition on the Rastatt uprising of 1848 and 1849 in the magnificent Residenzpalast. After the failed uprising, many Baden citizens sought refuge in Switzerland.

The exhibition is primarily dedicated to the two phases of the Baden Revolution and focuses on military endeavours. 1848 was dominated by the three “armies’ of Friedrich Hecker (1811-1881), Georg Herwegh (1817-1885)  and Gustav Struve (1805-1870)  and the battles at Kandern, Dossenbach and Staufen.

The year 1849 was characterised by the Constitutional Campaign of the Deutsche Bund, the flight of the Grand Duke of Baden and the climax of the soldiers’ uprising in Rastatt. The exhibition also looks at the military in Baden at the time and the federal fortress of Rastatt. The defeat of the revolutionary army in the fortress of Rastatt on 23 July 1849 marked the climax and end point of the revolution.

The Fondation de l’Hermitage in Lausanne (Canton of Vaud) hosts an exceptional exhibition in partnership with the Museum Langmatt in Baden (canton of Aargau). The magnificent collection of primarily Impressionist works, acquired between 1908 and 1919 by the collector couple Jenny and Sidney Brown, is coming to the Hermitage for its first public display outside its home at Villa Langmatt.

Forty years after the Fondation’s inaugural exhibition of works from French-speaking Switzerland, L’impressionnisme dans les collections romandes, the Fondation presents the most prestigious collections of Impressionism from the German-speaking cantons.

Villa Langmatt

This major event will also celebrate the 150th anniversary of Impressionism, which crystallized in 1874 with the first collective exhibition by a group of young independent artists.

Jenny Sulzer (1871-1968) and Sidney Brown (1865-1941) were each born into important entrepreneurial families based in Winterthur and married in 1896. While on their honeymoon in Paris, they bought their first painting, a landscape by Eugène Boudin. This acquisition established their interest in French painting, notably its use of colour and effects of light.

Villa Langmatt

Around the turn of the 20th century, the Browns frequently travelled to explore the art of their time and support artists. The collection is dominated by landscapes and still lifes, including works by Pierre Bonnard, Eugène Boudin, Mary Cassatt, Camille Corot, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Henri Fantin-Latour, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Odilon Redon, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley, making it one of Switzerland’s finest and most significant Impressionist collections.

These masterpieces are now held at the Villa Langmatt, an Art Nouveau residence influenced by English rural architecture. Built for the Browns by architect Karl Moser between 1899 and 1901, the house is closed for extensive restoration.

The exhibition at the Fondation de l’Hermitage will feature over 60 of the most remarkable works from the Langmatt collection. The exhibition will then travel to the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum & Fondation Corboud, Cologne, followed by the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna.

Johann Melchior Wyrsch (1732-1798) was one of Switzerland’s most important representatives of 18th-century portrait painting. Bourgeois and aristocratic ladies and gentlemen from central Switzerland, Solothurn, Besançon and the Franche-Comté ordered portraits from him.

Born in Buochs in 1732, he received his training in Lucerne and Einsiedeln. In 1753 and 1754, he worked in Rome and Naples. After returning to Nidwalden, he married Maria Barbara Keyser (1740-1803) in 1761.

Buochs, Johann Melchior Wyrsch 

The couple settled in Besançon in 1768, and Wyrsch founded an academy of painting and sculpture. After successful years as a portrait painter and director of the academy, he returned to Switzerland and became director of the municipal drawing school in Lucerne in 1784. In 1798, he was shot during the French invasion, although he was a mediator (or just because of that).

The exhibition ‘Johann Melchior Wyrsch. Frauenbildnisse’ (Johann Melchior Wyrsch. Portraits of women) at the Winkelriedhaus Museum in Nidwalden shows his portraits of women from the museum’s collection ann private collections.