Bechtler Collection: Relaunched and Rediscovered

From September 30 – April 23, 2017, the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art will present the Bechtler Collection: Relaunched and Rediscovered, an exhibition expanding on works from the museum’s collection including modern and contemporary artists. The impetus for the show comes from extensive new research into the collection and the artists in the holdings, many of whom have very little material available in English. Significant findings from the research will be included in the exhibition.

The Bechtler Collection: Relaunched and Rediscovered will include a number of themes beginning with an introduction to the Bechtler family and the artists with whom they were close including Adolf Luther, Joan Miró, Italo Valenti, and Eduardo Chillida. The exhibition will then examine the Discussion of Space, a central concern for many abstract artists including Victor Vasarely, Angel Duarte, Alexander Archipenko, and Gina Gilmour.

The artists Antoni Tàpies, Pablo Picasso, Marino Marini, Giorgio Morandi, Le Corbusier, Maud Gatewood, Laurent Jiménez-Balaguer, Antonio Zoran Music, Giuseppe Santomaso, Edouard Pignon, Bruno Meier, and Jim Nicholson will be presented with a focus on the many different 20th Century Political Positions taken by artists from identity politics to classicism’s comforting cry for a return to order.

The cultural critique of Pop art will feature Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Miguel Berrocal, Pol Mara, Rüdiger-Utz Kampmann, and Sam Francis and Walasse Ting’s 1¢ Life (examined last fall in the Bechtler Museum’s Sam Francis survey).

A room devoted to different Philosophical Investigations by artists through their work, will include Chillida’s relationship to the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and Pierre Soulages and Hans Hartung’s existentialism.

Finally, the exhibition will celebrate Concrete art, one of Switzerland’s most significant contributions to Modern art history, with a presentation of art and texts by Max Bill, Camille Graeser, Robert Gessner, Richard Paul Lohse, Willy Müller-Brittnau, Johann Itten, and Hans Hinterreiter.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.