Agenda

After the Museum Tinguely marked its 25th anniversary in 2021 with Ahoy! 25 Years of Moving Art; this year will see an extensive celebration of the centenary of the birth of its namesake Jean Tinguely (1925-1991).  Fasnacht 2025 has already started the Tinguely year.

On 22 May 2025, Swiss artist Jean Tinguely (1925-1991) would have celebrated his centenary. His innovative work is being honoured internationally with exhibitions, publications, events, and activities.

The celebrations begin on 22 May at the Museum Tinguely and Solitude Park on the Rhine. Exhibitions are also being held in several European cities, including Paris, Duisburg, Milan, Geneva, and Aix. The new publication by A. Pardey and R. Wetzel, L’univers tinguely-15 Dimensions in the Oeuvre of Jean Tinguely (Basel 2025), is also worth mentioning.

The art ghost train (Kunst-Geisterbahn) in Solitude Park is a special tribute. This ghost train is 100 years old and has stood in Vienna’s Prater.  English artist Rebecca Moss (1991) and Swiss artist Augustin Rebetez (1986) redesigned and redecorated the interior of this antique ghost train in the spirit of Tinguely.

They refer to the artwork Le Crocrodome de Zig et Puce, created by Tinguely, Bernhard Lüginbühl, Daniel Spoerri, and Niki de Saint Phalle in 1977 for the opening of the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Bernhard Luginbühl and Jean Tinguely, Le Crocrodrome de Zig & Puce, edited brochure of the exhibition, Gouache and Collage © 2025 Pro Litteris, Zurich, Museum Tinguely, Basel, Donation Prof Dr Roland Bieber in memory of Karola Mertz-Bieber.

The ghost train will run until 30 August 2025, the anniversary of Tinguely’s death.

Félix Vallotton (1865–1925) is one of the most important figures of French modernism at the turn of the century. Over 150 works from all creative periods, genres, and techniques are shown at two venues, including numerous masterpieces, such as the iconic work La Blanche et la Noire.

The exhibition titled Illusions perdues (Lost Illusions), was inspired by one of the most famous works of nineteenth-century literature, the three-part novel by Honoré de Balzac (1799-185o) that was part of his Comédie humaine. Like Balzac, Vallotton’s art is a precisely observed and trenchantly observed portrayal of society.

It is initially manifested in his woodcuts and can be frequently observed later in his paintings. Moreover, Vallotton’s style makes him one of the proponents of Verism, which distances itself from the picturesqueness of Impressionism, very similar to the way Balzac, with his realism, contributed to the overcoming of Romanticism.

Félix Vallotton (1865–1925), La blanche et la noire, 1913, Kunst Museum Winterthur, Hahnloser/Jaeggli Stiftung

Illusions have always been a fundamental subject of painting. Vallotton’s Nabi friend Maurice Denis (1870-1943) expressed more adamantly than anyone else that this was noticeably lost in the age of modernism, writing:

“Remember that a painting—before it is a horse, a nude model, or some anecdote—is essentially a flat surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order.”

This remark, made in the late nineteenth century, illustrates that the loss of illusion definitively marks the beginning of modernism.

The exhibition can be seen at two locations of the Kunst Museum Winterthur. The part with paintings and drawings is on show at Reinhart am Stadtgarten, whereas the wood prints and flower still lifes are on show at Villa Flora.

Sculptor, photographer, and master of artistic staging, Medardo Rosso (1858–1928) revolutionised sculpture around 1900 and became a role model for countless artists. Despite his significant influence, the artist is relatively unknown today. The exhibition “Medardo Rosso. Inventing Modern Sculpture” (Medardo Rosso. Die Erfindung der modernen Skulptur) aims to better understand his work.

The extensive retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Basel offers an opportunity to discover Rosso’s work in an overview exhibition featuring approximately 50 sculptures and around 250 photographs and drawings. It is also a chance to re-examine the development of modern sculpture.

This creates cross-generational encounters from Rosso’s time to the present, including works by Constantin Brâncuși, Edgar Degas, Eva Hesse, Meret Oppenheim, Auguste Rodin, and Alina Szapocznikow, Francis Bacon, Phyllida Barlow, Louise Bourgeois, Isa Genzken, Alberto Giacometti, Richard Serra, Georges Seurat, Andy Warhol, Francesca Woodman, Umberto Boccioni, Miriam Cahn, Giorgio de Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, Henry Moore, Meret Oppenheim, Odilon Redon, and other artists.

The exhibition, created in collaboration with the mumok (Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien), allows for exploring his radical and cross-media investigations of form (and formlessness), material, and technique. Even before Italian Futurism, which also drew on Rosso, he advocated for a radical and fundamental break with tradition.

“Medardo Rosso is undoubtedly the greatest living sculptor,” wrote Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) in the Parisian magazine L’Europe nouvelle after a studio visit to the artist. The Italian (Turin) Rosso lived in Paris for three decades from 1889 and returned to his homeland, Italy, in his later years.

In Paris, he made contact with the Impressionists and met Auguste Rodin (1840–1917), with whom he worked on a radical redefinition of sculpture. He also wrote numerous art-theoretical texts.

To overcome outdated ideas about representation, production, and perception, he believed a fundamental “revitalization” of sculpture was necessary: “There is no painting, there is no sculpture, there is only one thing that lives.” The human scale, the fragmented and thus intimate staging, and the moving, blurred edges of his figures contrast with the demands of monumental sculpture, which was common at the time, and thus with centuries-old sculptural traditions.

Rosso also pursued similar goals thematically and materially. Instead of heroic stories, he increasingly dedicated himself to the people of everyday life and created works that sought to capture the essence of a fleeting moment.

For his figures, Rosso used bronze and more ephemeral materials such as wax and plaster, which until then were mainly used only for designs or as aids in sculpture. Their softness and malleability give them a fleeting impression – a reason why his sculptures were also celebrated as the sculptural version of Impressionism.

From 1900 onwards, Rosso systematically incorporated photography into his design process. He photographed his figures and exhibited the images together with his sculptures, works by contemporaries, and copies of artworks from other eras as ensembles. Through this staging, the space around the works became part of the sculpture.

Rosso valued engaging in a relationship, in “conversation,” with his surroundings, as he put it: capturing the special moment when the motif suddenly emerges and becomes active.

(Source and further information: Heike Eipeldauer (Ed.), Medardo Rosso. The Invention of Modern Sculpture, Cologne, 2025; Kunstmuseum Basel; Museo Medardo Rosso; Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig).

The exhibition (Otto Dix – Adolf Dietrich. Zwei Maler am Bodensee) compares these two leading representatives of the New Objectivity (Neue Sachlichkeit, 1920s). They lived only 3 kilometers apart as the crow flies by Lake Constance – Adolf Dietrich (1877-1957) in Berlingen (Canton Thurgau) and Otto Dix (1891-1969) in Hemmenhofen on the German side of the lake.

Both artists found their motifs in the scenes and landscapes around Lake Constance. How do the artists differ in their approach? How did their backgrounds influence them, and how did they reflect the upheavals and changes of their time?

Adolf Dietrich, Landscape over Berlingen in Early Spring, 1933, private collection

Approximately 100 paintings, drawings, and prints from the museum’s collection, as well as loans from 17 museum and private collections in Switzerland and Germany, offer a new perspective on the work of both painters.

In a world premiere, the Fondation Beyeler shows a representative selection of surrealist masterpieces from the Hersaint Collection. The exhibition (The Key to Dreams.  Surrealist Masterworks from the Collection Hersaint) includes around 50 key works by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Dorothea Tanning, Toyen as well as Balthus, Jean Dubuffet, Wifredo Lam and many others, reflecting on significant surrealism themes such as the night, dreams, the unconscious, metamorphoses or the forest as a site of mystery.

The paintings from the Hersaint Collection are presented in dialogue with works from the Fondation Beyeler. Referencing the title of a significant work by René Magritte (1898-1967)  from the Hersaint Collection, La Clef des songes  (the Key to Dreams)  encapsulates the collection’s surrealist focus.

Claude Hersaint founded the Hersaint Collection (1904 – 1993), one of the earliest and most important collectors of Surrealist art. The Hersaint Collection comprises around 150 works, including  Max Ernst’s  (1891-1976) impressive Hausengel, der Triumph des Surrealismus) (The Fireside Angel, The Triumph of Surrealism), painted in 1937, which is the icon of Surrealism.

The Museum für Gestaltung Zürich looks back on an impressive history. Since its foundation in 1875, it has been essential in promoting and visualising graphics, design, crafts and applied art.

The current exhibition also bears witness to this. In the museum’s large hall, textiles unfold as a means of artistic expression. Whether woven, embroidered, appliquéd or tufted, around 60 items are interwoven in the exhibition Textile Manifests from Bauhaus to Soft Sculpture (Textil Manifeste-von Bauhaus bis soft Sculpture).

It shows anonymous pieces side by side with well-known artists. This creates surprising comparisons and new perspectives from different eras, from Bauhaus to the present.

The exhibits’ soft materials and choice of techniques connect them and create an impressive overall experience. Objects such as carpets, tapestries, and blankets are also encountered as sculptures. Multi-voiced audio commentaries explore individual themes, such as the current flourishing of textile art or the development of fibre art.

The Zentrum Paul Klee is devoting a major exhibition to the Swiss-French artist-architect, designer, writer, and theorist Le Corbusier (1887–1965). The exhibition focuses on the architect, designer, and urban planner’s working process and three-dimensional thought.

The exhibition (Le Corbusier. The Order of Things) offers a comprehensive overview of his entire output from an artistic perspective. It includes iconic items and groups of works that have remained largely unknown.

Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known under the pseudonym Le Corbusier, is one of the most important personalities of modern architecture and one of the most prominent and globally influential protagonists of international modernism.

He shaped modern architecture with enormous energy, radical visions and provocative rhetoric. In his work, he set out to design living and urban spaces in a new way.

To achieve this, he used the new possibilities of technical progress, combining these with the classical principles of aesthetics. Le Corbusier used the products of modern technologies, such as reinforced concrete in his buildings, ocean steamers, aeroplanes, and cars, as models for architecture since these placed form in a direct relationship with function. He developed methods to innovatively use the artistic and sculptural possibilities of this modern way of building.

This exhibition centres around Le Corbusier’s working process, his three-dimensional thought, and the artistic experiment in the ‘studio of patient research’ ( l’ Atelier de la recherche patiente), which he described as his method.

One can see how Le Corbusier combined space, light and colour. The presentation includes numerous drawings and sketches from the ‘Studio of patient research’ Throughout his life, he saw drawing as a central way of capturing and treating what was seen and developing new ideas.

The exhibition also illuminates the sources that flow into the design process—from objects found on the beach to the architecture of antiquity. The principle ‘Order’ was of great importance to Le Corbusier. With this concept, the exhibition also picks up an accessible and universal art and art-historical topic that extends back into antiquity while remaining topical.

Designing art and architecture meant ‘ordering’ things for him.  It was only through order, he believed, that humanity could develop spiritually and free itself from the moods of nature, from chance and randomness. In architecture, ‘the principle of order’ is first based on the desire to bring forms, colours, light, and space into a harmonic relationship. His understanding of order goes back to classical traditions in art and architecture.

He shared with the artistic avant-garde of his time the radical impulse to question traditions and to reshape—to ‘order’—the lived reality of people’s lives. This impulse connected art and architecture, culture and society.

The exhibition is arranged thematically and chronologically and divided into three axes: art, architecture and research.

The exhibition Verso shows what is hidden on the backside of paintings and painted (religious) works from the 14th to 18th centuries. One should be aware that these works of art were not displayed in museums but in their spiritual or secular context. Their meaning and symbolism were clear for contemporaries.

This context is missing in museums, and today, the meaning of symbolism and visualisation is mostly unknown. The back, ‘verso,’ often offers relevant information; sometimes, it is even a work of art. That is what makes this original exhibition so interesting and engaging.

Thirty-six works of art from the museum’s collection are displayed in a specially designed arrangement that allows visitors to see both sides of the paintings.

Hans Holbein the Younger, 1516, Jacob Meyer zum Hasen (mayor of Basel) and his wife Dorothea Kannengieser  ‘recto’ with ‘verso’ the family heraldry, 1520.

The exhibition provides a historical, social, religious and dynastic context only museum staff and other insiders can usually access. The exhibition thus opens up new perspectives of even well-known works of art (among others by Hans Baldung, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hans Holbein the Younger, Ambrosius Holbein and Konrad Witz.

Unknown artist, 16 century. Image of David Joris alias Johann von Brügge (1501-1556) around 1544. Inscription in Latin and German applied in 1559. Kunstmuseum Basel, Amerbach-Kabinett

The exhibition shows different facets with ‘verso’ images in eight sections and offers a wealth of observations on motifs and, for example, reused material.

For example, in 1517, Niklaus Manuel (called Deutsch) created a trompe l’oeil (a ‘deception of the eye’). This thin panel resembles a chiaroscuro drawing on coloured paper, a characteristic format of the period. Just as graphic artists often use both sides of a paper, the painter produced a second work on the verso that is even more spectacular than the recto.

Niklaus Manuel, 1517, Bathsheba bathing (recto); the death as warrior holds a young woman (verso). Kunstmuseum Basel, Amerbach-Kabinett. Photo : Martin P. Bühler

Images of the exhibition

Master of Sierentz, St. George and the dragon, around 1445, ‘verso’ the mourning of Christ, right-wing of a retable. Kunstmuseum Basel, Amerbach-Kabinett. Photo Martin P. Bühler

The Fondation de l’Hermitage shows 136 Impressionist and post-Impressionist masterpieces from the Petit Palais in Geneva. In the 1950s, the industrialist Oscar Ghez (1905-1998) began acquiring works that reflect his remarkably free approach to collecting, with interest in late-19th and early 20th-century painting that was not exclusively confined to the great masters.

Alongside magnificent works by Édouard Manet and Auguste Renoir, he also acquired paintings by lesser-known artists at the time, such as Gustave Caillebotte, Charles Angrand, Maximilien Luce and Louis Valtat, some of whom have since become iconic.

A particular feature of the Ghez collection is his early acquisition of many works by women painters. In the late 1950s, the collector’s anti-conformist approach and belief that these artists had not been given their just value led him to purchase works by Marie Bracquemond, Suzanne Valadon, María Blanchard, Nathalie Kraemer, Jeanne Hébuterne, and Tamara de Lempicka, whose works have since gained much greater recognition.

Ghez’s approach to the main currents in figurative painting similarly took him off the beaten track. Alongside the great names of Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, Fauvism, the School of Paris, and Cubism, his collection includes highly original works by lesser-known artists of the second half of the 20th century.

The Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel (CDN) presents the exhibition ‘Imaginaires atomiques/ Atomare Bildwelten’, which examines Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s (1921-1990) vision of the atomic bomb and combines his work with that of contemporary artists.

The atomic bomb had a strong influence on Friedrich Dürrenmatt. He responded with an extensive body of artistic and literary work, as well as with civic actions and pacifist declarations.

In his famous play The Physicists, caricatures, and cabaret pieces, he resorts to humour and the grotesque to warn humanity of the danger of self-destruction.

In addition to the works of Friedrich Dürrenmatt, works by Vanessa Billy (*1978), Christine Boillat (*1978), Miriam Cahn (*1949), Alain Huck (*1957) and Gilles Rotzetter (*1978) provide contemporary insights into a highly topical subject.

In the exhibition ‘L’Âge atomique – Les artistes à l’épreuve de l’histoire’ at the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, further works by Friedrich Dürrenmatt from the CDN collection will be on display until 9 February 2025.