The Kunsthaus Zürich’s 2010 program is dominated by the museum’s centenary: on 17 April 2010, Carl Moser’s flagship building on Heimplatz will be one hundred years old. Switzerland’s oldest combined collection and exhibition space will treat visitors to some high-calibre shows, dedicated to 18th-century art (Salomon Gessner), ‘Van Gogh, Cézanne, Monet – The Bührle Collection’, and the contemporary photography of Thomas Struth, among other things. The high point of the fall season is a homage to Picasso.
Pablo Picasso, The Open Window, 1929. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Steegmann Collection © 2009 ProLitteris, Zurich
The Kunsthaus Zürich published the program for its centenary year in 2010 today. Common to all of its upcoming events is the Kunsthaus Zürich’s own collection and its ties to Zurich, to the museum’s patrons, and to the artists who have benefited from the exposure provided them by the Kunstgesellschaft. A variety of rarely seen works on loan from institutions around the world will enhance exhibition activities in 2010.
Exhibition Program
Georges Seurat: Figure in Space. Until 17 January 2010.
Georges Seurat (1859–1891), the leading exponent of the Neo-Impressionist school of drawing and painting, cast his landscapes, seascapes and human subjects in an innovative light. The inventor of the Pointillist technique, whose severe compositions were admired by the artists of the Bauhaus movement, left behind an oeuvre that is seldom exhibited. The 70 pieces on show include loans from the world’s most renowned collections.
Picture Ballot!
20 November 2009 – 7 February 2010.
The winner of the 2009 Picture Ballot is ‘Herbstmeer XI’ (1910) by Emil Nolde (1867–1956), chosen by the members of the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft as their favorite. It is shown juxtaposed with paintings and works of graphic art featuring similar motifs. Then, from 17 December 2010 until February 2011, the Kunstgesellschaft will offer members a choice of five contemporary three dimensional works in ‘Sculpture Ballot!’
Van Gogh, Cézanne, Monet – The Bührle Collection visits the Kunsthaus
Zürich. 12 February – 16 May.
The unique private collection of more than 150 pictures and sculptures is among the most significant of its kind worldwide. It comprises masterpieces of French Impressionism by such luminaries as Manet, Cézanne, Monet and van Gogh as well as Picasso, and includes works by Canaletto, Ingres and Frans Hals. The provenance of the pictures collected by the Zurich-based industrialist and art historian Emil Bührle (1890–1956), along with the circumstances of their acquisition, is addressed in the Kunsthaus presentation and accompanying events. Its exhibition in the generously proportioned space Bührle donated to the Kunsthaus and the city of Zurich will serve as a dress rehearsal for the collection, which is destined to be housed in its own special suite in David Chipperfield’s Kunsthaus extension when the new building opens in 2015.
Idyll in an Obstructed Landscape: The Gessner Cabinet at the Kunsthaus
Zürich. 26 February – 16 May.
In the Europe of the Enlightenment, the drawings and watercolors of Salomon Gessner (1730–1788) were highly respected. His prose idylls won the Zurich painter-poet world renown, and in North and South America as well as in Russia, Armenia and the Caucasus, Gessner was celebrated for his Arcadian visions. Self-taught, Gessner was instrumental in the development of the sentimental landscape painting, at once meticulously detailed and idiosyncratic. The Kunsthaus show reconstructs Gessner’s once-celebrated painting cabinet, presented by the city of Zurich to the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft in 1818 on permanent loan as the city’s first publicly accessible art exhibition, destined to survive both the Napoleonic Wars and the confusion of the Helvetic Republic and serving as the cornerstone of today’s Kunsthaus collection as early as the first half of the 19th century.
Adrian Paci.
4 June – 22 August.
Adrian Paci (born 1969) is one of Albania’s few internationally known artists. In his work – which encompasses videos, paintings, installations and photography – he addresses topics such as migration, globalization and cultural identity and demonstrates their effects on the human subject. The Kunsthaus is hosting Paci’s first solo museum show in Switzerland. The artist has specially created a new video piece for the occasion.
Thomas Struth.
11 June – 12 September.
With the success of his museum pictures in the early 1990s, Thomas Struth (born 1954) ascended to the ranks of Andreas Gursky and Jeff Wall as an art photographer with international reach. From 1973 to 1980 Struth studied painting with Gerhard Richter and photography with Bernd Becher at the Art Academy of Düsseldorf. In addition to cityscapes and museum pictures, Struth’s photographic oeuvre also encompasses classical portraits (including his celebrated families) as well as architectural studies and landscapes. Largeformat and developed in thematic series, Struth’s work inhabits the realm between documentation and interpretation, between studies of society and psychological excavations. With his contemplative and circumspect methodology, Struth pays homage not only to the history of classical photography but also to contemporary art. The Kunsthaus Zürich hosts the kickoff to Struth’s first major European survey exhibition.
Giant Herbs and Monster Trees: Drawings and prints by Carl Wilhelm Kolbe.
10. September – 28. November.
C.W. Kolbe (1759–1835) is one of the most intriguing figures in German art at the turn of the 19th century. With his fantastical, virtually surreal landscapes featuring woods and marshes, he exerted a considerable (albeit long underestimated) influence on the graphic arts between Sturm und Drang and Romanticism. From 1805 to 1808 Kolbe lived in Zurich, where he produced engravings based on aquarelle gouaches from the estate of Salomon Gessner. As a souvenir of his sojourn by the banks of the Limmat, he presented the Künstlergesellschaft with a drawing. The fear of radical change lurks in his Arcadian fantasies.
Picasso.
15 October 2010 – 30 January 2011.
Pablo Picasso’s first-ever museum retrospective was mounted at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1932, curated by the still-controversial master himself. It was a signal moment in the history of modern art, a one-of-a-kind event that is now looked upon as a milestone in the annals of the exhibitions shown at the Kunsthaus Zürich. In tribute to the centenary of its founding, the Kunsthaus presents a brilliant homage to the artist featuring works from his early days as well as his blue and pink periods, his Cubist phase, and his ‘urbane’ classical period. By means of 60 masterpieces originally selected by Picasso himself, the revival traces its forebear’s influence on the history of the artist’s reception and its exemplary significance for the relationship among artists, art dealers, museums and cultural institutions. Thanks to the support of the most renowned collections and private lenders in Europe, the USA and Japan, the Kunsthaus show promises to be the highlight of the museum’s centenary year.
Kunsthaus Zürich, Heimplatz 1, CH–8001 Zurich.
Opening hours Sat, Sun, Tues 10 a.m.–6 p.m., Wed, Thurs, Fri 10 a.m.–8 p.m., closed on Mondays.
www.kunsthaus.ch
