Introduction 1st Floor
Swiss Art from Caspar Wolf to Martha Stettler
Swiss art is one core aspect of Kunstmuseum Bern’s collection. The current display provides insights into the breadth of artistic production in Switzerland, from the late 18th to the early 20th century.
In the first gallery, dedicated to the genre of landscape painting, the focus is on depictions of the Swiss mountains. It begins with scenes by Caspar Wolf, who was one of the first artists to venture into the inhospitable Alps and is now considered a pioneer of landscape painting. In the works of Franz Niklaus König and Louise Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, the mountains create more of a backdrop, while Ferdinand Hodler, as a representative of Modernism, depicted the most famous peaks from the Bernese Oberland in all their monumentality.
The display in the main gallery concentrates on a sequence of motifs from the Albert Anker. Reading Girls exhibition, involving childhood, adolescence, and reading. Paintings by Anker, his contemporaries, and also later artists reveal a wide range of differing practices and stylistic approaches. Skillfully painted genre scenes or portraits by Karl Stauffer-Bern are juxtaposed with the atmospheric plein air painting of Martha Stettler, while the cool sobriety of Félix Vallotton is confronted by Cuno Amiet’s post-impressionist explosions of color.
A small adjoining gallery is dedicated to the genre of portrait painting with a particular emphasis on self-portraits by Swiss artists from the same era. Viewers encounter the searching, contemplative, or provocative imagery of such painters as Clara von Rappard, Max Buri, and Ottilie Roederstein, who are engaged in a critical dialogue with their mirrored reflection, that is, their actual selves. The small gallery opposite is presenting an excursion into contemporary Swiss art, a homage to the Bern artist Markus Raetz (1941–2020), whose work focused on visual perception, addressing the constant metamorphosis of motifs.
Introduction Ground Floor
On the ground floor, works by El Anatsui and Kader Attia as representatives of global contemporary art form the prelude. A neighboring room features the very greatest names of international art history: Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh. Landscapes by Swiss exponents of modern art such as Félix Vallotton and Giovanni Giacometti complete the exhibition. A side cabinet is dedicated to the legacy of Eberhard W. Kornfeld (1923–2023). It presents the five prestigious paintings that the famous art dealer, collector, and influential mediator bequeathed to the Kunstmuseum Bern in an extraordinarily generous gesture.
Eberhard W. Kornfeld Bequest (Cabinet Ground Floor)
The Swiss art dealer, collector, and patron Eberhard W. Kornfeld died in April 2023, a few months before his 100th birthday. He bequeathed five outstanding paintings to Kunstmuseum Bern, an institution that he had a special relationship with. These are now being presented to the public for the first time.
Born in Basel, Eberhard W. Kornfeld began his career in 1945 with the Bern art dealer August Klipstein. Following Klipstein’s unexpected death in 1951, he gradually took over its management, successfully transforming the venture, from 1972 under the name Galerie Kornfeld, into a leading international auction house.
Kornfeld was known for his keen sense of judgment, expertise, and eloquence, as well as for his high scholarly standards when publishing auction catalogues or catalogues raisonnés. Major artists represented by the gallery that were also Kornfeld’s personal friends included Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, and Sam Francis. These relationships, as well as an admiration for Ernst Ludwig Kirchner’s oeuvre, were reflected in his collecting activities.
During the long period of his influential activities in Bern, Kornfeld always generously supported Kunstmuseum Bern and Zentrum Paul Klee through loans, by organizing contacts, and by providing insights into his gallery’s archives. Kornfeld, a generous benefactor, donated a number of works to the institution, including prints by Maurice de Vlaminck and Alfred Kubin, and – together with Marlies Kornfeld – a monumental mobile by Alexander Calder.
Of the five paintings that Kornfeld bequeathed to the museum, each represents a special relationship with a particular artist or area of research. Each of the carefully selected works closes a gap in the museum’s collection. Kunstmuseum Bern will therefore remain closely associated with this extraordinary art connoisseur, generous supporter, and valued friend into the future – we are deeply indebted.
Introduction Basement Floor
In the basement of the historical Stettler building the central avant-garde trends of modern art are represented with Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism and abstract art. Highlights include Violin Hanging on a Wall by Pablo Picasso, Meret Oppenheim’s Under the Raincloud or Piet Mondrian’s Painting No. II. The presentation is complemented by a selection of works by the Bern artist Adolf Wölfli from the holdings of the Adolf Wölfli Foundation.
The basement of the Atelier 5 building brings together paintings by famous representatives of Abstract Expressionism – for example Jackson Pollock’s Brown and Silver II and Lee Krasner’s Forest no 2 – with works by concrete and abstract artists such as Sophie Taeuber-Arp or Max Bill.
Adolf Wölfli Room (Basement Floor)
Wölfli and Anker. Albert Anker’s Presence in Adolf Wölfli’s Universe
This display of drawings from Adolf Wölfli’s body of work is intended to echo the Albert Anker. Reading Girls exhibition currently on show at Kunstmuseum Bern. It attempts to discover some parallels in the two artists’ very different visual worlds. The undertaking has been inspired by Albert Anker – Adolf Wölfli. Parallel Worlds, a project organized by Therese Bhattacharya-Stettler and Daniel Baumann at Kunstmuseum Bern in 1999.
Anker and Wölfli never met, even though it would have been possible since they lived both in the same region and during an overlapping period of time. Adolf Wölfli (1864–1930) created his work at the Waldau Psychiatric Hospital near Bern from 1899 onwards, while Albert Anker (1831–1910) worked in Ins until his death and remained associated with the place in the Bernese Seeland throughout his life. Although the intentions and personalities of the two artists could not be more different, parallels can nevertheless be discovered in their visual worlds.
Both of them had a particular interest in Bern as a city and place to live. Albert Anker is considered the ultimate painter of rural and middle-class worlds as far as they pertained to Bern and its surroundings. For Wölfli, Bern was a recurring point of reference and even the places he invented that were located in remote parts of the world would seem to correspond to his local experiences. His drawings repeatedly feature references to bell towers, clocks, or even streams and rivers flowing around these invented places. Wouldn’t it be plausible, for example, to interpret the depiction of his Harbor of the Saints=Light=Island in the Pacific, English=British Colony as a view of Bern, considering its three centers of energy represented by the cathedral, Zytglogge tower, and Church of the Holy Ghost?
In addition, the concept of the idyll plays a key role in the work of both artists. While for Anker the idyll has been fundamental in the reception of his art, such an association is surprising for Wölfli’s work. It was, in fact, Harald Szeemann who pointed out the important function of this feature in the construction of Wölfli’s world. He recognized that Wölfli’s fragile universe was built on the tension generated when juxtaposing the idyllic and the catastrophic. An involvement in such subject matter becomes clear in his collages, for which he used illustrations from magazines produced before 1900. He is making reference to an iconography that is quite similar to Anker’s imagery from those years. It is in such visual worlds that the two artists become momentarily surprisingly close.
In addition, Swiss art history has stylized them both as prototypical figures, employing specific legends relating to the respective artists: Anker as epitomizing the nostalgic painter of a peaceful, harmonious world, and Wölfli as the archetype of an artist who draws inspiration entirely from within. The construction of such legends demonstrates the significance of the two artists, although any such myth-making could certainly be questioned. The current Anker exhibition focuses on the socially critical and enlightening aspects of Anker’s work. Wölfli, in contrast, is today regarded as a creator who clearly stipulated the nature of his own work and nurtured his self-image as an artist, not least in order to improve his personal circumstances as a patient at the Waldau clinic.
Biography
Born in 1864 in the Emmental, Wölfli grows up under deprived circumstances in and around Bern. In 1870 the father abandons the family. Wölfli and his mother become destitute and are forced to resettle in the community of Schangnau. In 1874 Wölfli’s mother dies and her youngest son grows up in degrading circumstances as an indentured child laborer in various farming families in Schangnau. Between 1880 and 1890 Wölfli finds work as farmhand, laborer and itinerant worker. In 1890 he is condemned to two years of prison for attempting to molest young girls. After being released from prison, he becomes more and more isolated. In 1895 he is sent to the Waldau clinic near Bern in order to examine his mental accountability. He is diagnosed with “dementia paranoides” (schizophrenia).
In 1895, on the request of the doctors, Wölfli writes his first life story. In 1899 he begins to draw. The first drawings to be saved date from 1904 and 1905. From 1908 to 1912 Wölfli writes his fictitious autobiography From the Cradle to the Grave (3,000 pages). From 1912 to 1916 Wölfli works on the Geographic and Algebraic Books (3,000 pages). They describe the creation of the future St. Adolf=Giant=Creation. Around 1916 Wölfli starts his series of drawings that he offers or sells to doctors, employees, visitors and the first collectors. From 1917 to 1922 he works on the Books with Songs and Dances (7,000 pages) where he celebrates and sings of his world to come. In 1921 Walter Morgenthaler publishes Ein Geisteskranker als Künstler (Madness and Art. The Life and Works of Adolf Wölfli, translated and publ. 1992), his groundbreaking study read by Rainer Maria Rilke and Lou Andreas-Salomé among others. From 1924 to 1928 Wölfli writes the Album Books with Dances and Marches (around 5,000 pages) in which he sings further praises of his world. From 1928 to 1930 he develops the (unfinished) Funeral=March. On November 30, 1930, Wölfli dies of stomach cancer.
Hilar Stadler
Curator of the Adolf Wölfli Foundation
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The Collection
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Curators: Nadine Franci, Anne-Christine Strobel, Nina Zimmer
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