Events

Marking the 500th anniversary of the Spanish conqueror Hernán Cortés' landfall in the Gulf of Mexico, this major exhibition offers a fascinating insight into Aztec culture. At the centre of the exhibition are two unique feather shields and a nephrite jade figurine from the Württemberg State Museum, objects that have never been presented in the context of Aztec culture. These exquisite treasures will be complemented by high-quality objects loaned from Mexican and European institutions. Another focal point of this exhibition will be the presentation of the latest research results; for example, previously undisclosed findings regarding the great temple, the Templo Mayor, first discovered in 1978, will be on display. Impressive stone sculptures, ceramics, mosaics and gold works will provide a glimpse into Aztec art and culture, with vivid illustrations from colourful illuminated manuscripts bringing the visitor deeper into the subject. The dramaturgy of the exhibition follows the journey of Cortés from the peripheral provinces all the way to the sacred ceremonial precinct of the capital, Tenochtitlán.

Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s–1980s traces the emergence and development of abstraction in the Arab world through paintings and sculpture dating from the 1950s through the 1980s. Drawn from the collection of the Barjeel Art Foundation based in Sharjah, UAE, the exhibition features some 75 works by a diverse group of artists, including Etel Adnan, Shakir Hassan Al Said, Kamal Boullata, Huguette Caland, Ahmed Cherkaoui, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Rachid Koraïchi, and Hassan Sharif, among others. Taking Shape reveals how artists moved away from figuration toward a process of simplifying and schematizing reality—an approach initiated by both artist collectives as well as by individual practitioners in the region and the Arab diaspora. Accompanying the exhibition will be a fully illustrated publication featuring new scholarship.

Gerald Clarke: Falling Rock is the first mid-career survey and major solo exhibition of contemporary Native American artist Gerald Clarke. A member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians, Clarke utilizes wit and humor to expose historical and present-day injustice, bringing a de-colonial perspective to critical social, economic, and environmental issues facing our world.

Modernisms: Iranian, Turkish, and Indian Highlights from NYU’s Abby Weed Grey Collection explores art from the 1960s and early ’70s from Iran, Turkey, and India via selections from the unparalleled Abby Weed Grey Collection of Modern Asian and Middle Eastern Art at New York University. Featuring approximately 25 to 35 paintings, sculpture, drawings, and prints from each country, the exhibition will shed light on how Iranian, Turkish, and Indian artists created works that drew on their specific heritages while also engaging in global discourses around key issues of modernity. Illuminating our understanding of art made outside the long-dominant North American–West European axis, the exhibition also features historic exhibition brochures, invitations, photographs, correspondence, journals, and invoices from the Abby Weed Grey Papers housed in the NYU Archives.

The Kunstpalast dedicates a major overview exhibition to Angelika Kauffmann (1741–1807), the most famous female artist in the age of Enlightenment and Sentimentalism.

Encouraged by Courbet, influenced by Manet, and esteemed by Van Gogh, Wilhelm Leibl (1844–1900) was among the most important representatives of realism in Europe. His oeuvre revolves around the uncompromisingly authentic portrayal of human beings. With his retreat from the city to the country, Leibl founded a style of modern figural painting in which the truth of nature took priority over the idylls and narrative tendencies of traditional genre painting. Wilhelm Leibl’s guiding principle was not that his models be beautiful, but that they be “well perceived.” This exhibition, which includes loan works from Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, and the USA, arose in cooperation with the Kunsthaus Zürich.

"Still, for convenience, I refer to “outsider” art and “outsider” artists, as a shorthand with the understanding that others may favor other descriptives. Outsider art is not a “school” of art; what sets it apart is the circumstances and characteristics of the artist. The biographical narrative of every outsider artist is unique, but most share one or more of the following: no or only limited art training; living with mental or physical infirmities; poverty; educational deficit; being held back by racial discrimination. Most did not create their art for others, and any made no effort to share the work with anyone; some even affirmatively withheld it from the view of others." -Victor Keen “When it comes to self-taught and outsider art, there is a special barrier to a full embrace by head and heart. In the face of this supposedly raw art, we are often exhorted with evangelical force to renounce analysis and lay aside what we carry of knowledge and experience—what the artist Jean Dubuffet called asphyxiating culture—in favor of genuine response.” –Lyle Rexer

Goddess, she-devil, doll, fetish, nymphet, or wonderful dream creature—women were the central subject matter of Surrealist male fantasies. It was often only in the role of companion or model that female artists could succeed in penetrating the circle surrounding André Breton, the founder of the group of Surrealists. However, on closer examination it becomes evident that the participation of women artists in the movement was considerably larger than is generally known or reported. The SCHIRN is now presenting the female contribution to Surrealism for the first time in a major thematic exhibition. Female artists differed from their male colleagues above all in their reversal of perspective: They often embarked on a search for a (new) model of female identity by exploring their own reflection or by adopting different roles. Contemporary political events, literature, and non-European myths and religions are further subjects that the Surrealist women examine in their works. With some 260 impressive paintings, works on paper, sculptures, photographs, and films by 35 international artists, the exhibition reflects a diverse spectrum in terms of both style and content. Besides famous female artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Frida Kahlo or Meret Oppenheim, visitors will be able to discover countless unknown but exciting artistic positions from over three decades of Surrealist art, such as Alice Rahon or Kay Sage.

The ALBERTINA Museum is devoting its spring exhibition of 2020 to one of the most important private collections of French modernist art. The Hahnloser Collection came together between 1905 and 1936, initially on the basis of close and friendly exchange between the collecting couple of Arthur and Hedy Hahnloser-Bühler and artist-friends including Pierre Bonnard, Ferdinand Hodler, Henri Matisse, and Félix Vallotton. Later on, the collection also came to include works by their predecessors including Cézanne, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Van Gogh, and others. The ALBERTINA Museum’s ca. 120-work exhibition presents an overview of this internationally unique collection of modern art, with works on loan from the fine art museums Kunstmuseum Bern and Kunst Museum Winterthur additionally serving to illuminate this collection’s exemplary cultural policy aspect.

This exhibition brings together a selection of drawings created by the Inuk artist Shuvinai Ashoona over the past two decades. In many of her drawings, Ashoona references traditional Inuit imagery—from quotidian life to the mythic—and she is celebrated for the imaginative way she combines these and other cultural references to develop a sophisticated and highly personal iconography. Derived equally from her environment and her imagination, Ashoona’s work is fed by her fascination with horror films, comic books and television. In this exhibition, visitors will encounter Ashoona’s wide-reaching interests that blur boundaries between the worlds of reality and fantasy, past and future. Organized and circulated by the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto and curated by Nancy Campbell

In her work, Juul Kraijer explores human nature. To her, the human body is the signifier for all aspects of being human – it serves as a projection surface for the entire spectrum of human reality. With the exhibition "Juul Kraijer. Twoness", the Museum Sinclair-Haus presents a comprehensive insight into the oeuvre of the Dutch artist. The solo exhibition is a contribution of the Museum Sinclair-Haus to the 2020 annual programme of the Nantesbuch Foundation, which is dedicated to the theme “Determination/Destiny”.

Nearly seventy of the finest examples of Asian art in the United States, collected by John D. Rockeller 3rd and his wife Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller between the 1940s and '70s, will be showcased in an exhibition on loan from the Asia Society Museum. The extraordinary range of bronzes, ceramics, and metalwork reveals great achievements in Asian art spanning more than two millennia.

Agnes Pelton (1881–1961) was among the generation of American artists in the first decades of the twentieth century who rejected realism in favor of portraying their inner emotional states. But unlike her peers, who based their abstractions on the exterior world, Pelton used her vocabulary of curvilinear, biomorphic forms and delicate, shimmering veils of light to depict the unseen forces she believed exist in nature. Pelton’s art was included in the 1913 Armory Show, but her decision to remove herself from the art world meant that even within her lifetime she was relatively unknown except for her participation in the short-lived Transcendental Painting Group (1938–1942). Its members, like Pelton, believed in numerology, astrology, and faith healing. Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist, the first survey of her work in more than twenty-four years, brings together approximately forty paintings dating from 1917 to 1961 that will illuminate her artistic contribution to American modernism and place her art within the context of international spiritual and esoteric abstraction. Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist is organized by the Phoenix Art Museum, and curated by Gilbert Vicario, The Selig Family Chief Curator. The installation at the Whitney Museum is overseen by Barbara Haskell, curator, with Sarah Humphreville, senior curatorial assistant.

The political collages of John Heartfield (1891–1968) have earned him a reputation as one of the most innovative graphic artists of the Weimar Republic. His photomontages and book covers based on collages which had their origins in Berlin’s Dada scene were directed against Fascism and made him internationally famous. Their explosive power has lost none of its impact.

Can anyone fail to notice her? — the large Dominique who greets visitors to the Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich with her gentle smile. The astounding portrait hanging in the corridor leading to the exhibition hall is captivating, with its inner radiance and immense sense of presence, holding the viewer suspended between fascination and bewilderment. When Franz Gertsch (b. 1930) started working on the woodcut in 1988, he was unable to decide for a long time on whether or not to use a landscape motif instead. In addition to his portraits — which in the meantime have become icons of Swiss art — the great Swiss artist is also renowned today for his enchanting landscapes. However, his early work is less familiar to the general public. This is precisely the phase of Gertsch’s extensive oeuvre on which the presentation planned in honour of his ninetieth birthday will be focusing. In parallel with the exhibition being held at the Franz Gertsch Museum in Burgdorf (“Zeitgeist Images: Franz Gertsch’s Works of the 1970s”, 21 March – 16 August 2020), the selection presented here will provide an insight into Gertsch’s early work, from a period when he was also creating romantic-seeming drawings in addition to delicate woodcuts. Individual groups of topics from his collection and from the ETH’s collection’s own holdings have been selected in collaboration with the artist. The survey will be rounded off with colour samples — affectionately termed “études (de) couleurs” by the artist — that are produced during the complex process of printing his incomparable monochrome worlds. A catalogue is planned for the exhibition. Curators: Dr. Linda Schädler and Alexandra Barcal, Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich