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26/2/2010

Masterpieces of Modernity

Museum der Moderne, Salzburg

Curators: Dieter Schwarz, Kunstmuseum Winterthur and Toni Stooss, Emilie Breyer, MdM Salzburg

The MdM MÖNCHSBERG presents the comprehensive collection of the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, featuring 240 paintings, sculptures and drawings by 105 renowned artists. This is the very first time that this outstanding collection of works spanning 150 years of art history has left the museum due to renovation works, and has gone on an exquisite tour. After stops at the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn and the MART Rovereto, the collection will be on display in Salzburg. We are very proud to be the only museum in Austria which is part of this tour.
"Masterpieces of Modernity" will be on display on the entire exhibition area of the MdM MÖNCHSBERG from 27 February to 30 May 2010.

This magnificent collection of the Kunstmuseum Winterthur – referred to by Gerhard Richter, one of the most renowned living artists, as his favourite museum - was created over 150 years ago on the initiative of private art enthusiasts. In 1948 the Artist’s Association Winterthur was established by artists and art enthusiasts, which lead to the foundation of the Kunstverein Winterthur, which runs the museum and owns the famous collection to this day. Owing to purchases by the Kunstverein and donations from collectors like the Bühler, Hahnloser or Reinhart families, which are still active today, the museum’s collection was substantially enlarged during the second half of
the 19th and first half of the 20th century.

In 1960 Balthasar Reinhart began to acquire significant modernist works through the Volkart Foundation, the corporate foundation of the Reinhart family, which he provided to the museum on permanent loan. When Dr. Emil Friedrich, a banker from Winterthur, and his wife bequeathed their collection to the Kunstverein, the Kunstmuseum Winterthur owned one of the foremost collections of Classical Modernism. In 1973 the private collection of the Wolfer family further complemented the museum’s collection with a coherent group of works which closed the gaps of the French collection of the first generation of collectors.

In the past few decades the collecting activity focused on more recent American art, whose formal awareness is an answer to French art in many respects. As Italian art, by artists such as Medardo Rosso and Giorgio Morandi was always greatly appreciated in Winterthur, the museum also began to focus on recent Italian art trends. In this way some sort of dialogue was created, which was enriched by important individual voices, among others by Gerhard Richter.

The exhibition starts with French paintings which provides the basis of Modernist Art. Ranging from landscape paintings by Eugène Boudin and Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot and "en plein air" landscapes by Claude Monet to impressionist studies by Alfred Sisley and an early work by Paul Cézanne, the exhibition continues with works by Vincent van Gogh, Maurice de Vlaminck and Post-Impressionism.

Romantic symbolist painting in which "colour intensively acts not only as material phenomenon, but also as subjective experience" (Director Dieter Schwarz) is represented with works by Eugène Delacroïx, Odilon Redon and Ferdinand Hodler and works by the Nabis artists Maurice Denis, Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard as well as the Swiss painter Félix Vallotton. The splendid series of paintings by Bonnard is one of the highlights of the exhibition.

"Masterpieces of Modernity" brings together parallel art movements such as Cubism – represented by Robert Delaunay, Amédéé Ozenfant, Gustave Louis Buchet, Georges Braque, Juan Gris and Pablo Picasso – with Fernand Léger, the "Blaue Reiter" and "Bauhaus" artists, such as Wassily Kandinsky, Alexej von Jawlensky, Paul Klee, Otto Meyer-Amden and Oskar Schlemmer, and Surrealism, which is represented by René Margritte, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy or Kurt Seligmann.

Apart from representatives of New Objectivity, like Adolf Dietrich, Niklaus Stoecklin, Alexander Kanoldt and Manfred Hirzel, whose works are characterized by Symbolic Naturalism, works by Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and Kurt Schwitters show the artists’ exploration of geometrical abstraction. Leading representatives of the resulting Concretism Movement are Max Bill, Verena Loewensberg, Fritz Glarner and François Morellet. Their works are juxtaposed to works by Hans Arp who created the term "Concrete Art" or "Concretism".

The exhibition further features exciting works by Alberto Giacometti and Giorgio Morandi – who maintained close contacts with Max Bill.

Another part of the exhibition is dedicated to sculptures which enter into a dialogue with paintings and drawings. Works featured in the exhibition include figural sculptures by Medardo Rosso and August Rodin, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Aristide Maillol, an early harlequin bust by Picasso, and a collection of cubist sculptures by Antoine Pevsner, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Jacques Lipchitz. Excellent works by Constantin Brancusi, and in particular Alberto Giacometti, who both have a very independent artistic approach, are on display.

Works by artists such as Bram van Velde, Nicolas de Staël, Pablo Picasso, Jean Dubuffet, Karel Appel are examples of 1960s Informal Art, characteristic for the transition from Classical Modernism to Contemporary Art. Italian artists represented in the exhibition include Piero Manzoni, Giulio Paolini, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Marisa and Mario Merz and Giuseppe Penone, whose oeuvre ranges from Italian Post-War Art by Lucio Fontana and Arte Povera to Contemporary Art.

Another large section of the exhibition is dedicated to American Post-War Art, featuring Abstract Expressionism by artists like Philip Guston, Mark Tobey and John Chamberlain, and minimalist tendencies by Richard Tuttle, Brice Marden, Eva Hesse and Robert Mangold. This multi-faceted presentation of the history of art from the beginning of Modernism to the present day is concluded by artists like Richard Artschwager, Gerhard Richter and Thomas Schütte.

There is a lounge in the exhibition parcours, where visitors can watch the film "Von Stiftern und Anstiftern - das Kunstmuseum Winterthur" (Script and direction: Horst Brandenburg).

Image: Mario Merz, Senza titolo, 1983-1985. Acrylic, cement and branches on paper, purchase 1998 © 2010 Kunstmuseum Winterthur

Press contact:
Christine Forstner press & public relation
MdM Salzburg, Mönchsberg 32, 5020 Salzburg t +43.(0)662.84 22 20 - 601 f +43.(0)662.84 22 20 - 701 presse@mdmsalzburg.at

Opening: Sat 27.2.2010, 11.00 a.m.

Museum der Moderne Mönchsberg
Mönchsberg 32 - 5020 Salzburg
Hours:
tuesday to sunday: 10.00 a.m.- 06.00 p.m.
wednesday: 10.00 a.m. - 08.00 p.m.
monday closed
Admission:
Adults € 8,-
Seniors € 6,-
Children 6 years of age and older, pupils/apprentices, students € 6,-
Groups of more than 10 persons € 7,-
Familyticket:
min. 1 parent and 1 child (up to 15 years of age) € 12,-

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