7 JUNE 2006

WEDNESDAY - BASEL - BEYELER FOUNDATION

figure-color-space

HENRI MATISSE EXHIBIT

INVITED SPEAKER - GOTTFRIED BOEHM (UNIVERSITY OF BASEL)

Henri Matisse is the artist of the hour. The great pioneer of modernism, whose compositions in color and form pushed the potentials of figuration and, indirectly, abstraction to their limits and beyond, has remained an incredibly influential painter to this day. His work, rife with breaks yet evincing continual development, is the subject of a Fondation Beyeler exhibition, the first comprehensive review of its kind to be held in Switzerland for over twenty years.

The theme is Matisse’s equally revolutionary and fascinating penetration, redefinition, and transcendence of pictorial space as defined by figure and color. Approximately 160 paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints from all phases of the artist’s career will be on display. Beginning with the quiet interiors of Matisse’s early years, still beholding to the nineteenth century, the exhibition leads through the Fauvist explosions of color and their consequences. Then come the rigorous, almost shocking abstract formal compositions of the First World War years, from which Matisse liberated himself in the painterly and subtly erotic odalisques of his early period in Nice. There follow his series of the 1930s and ‘40s with their increasing reduction to a system of colored signs, which finally issued in the superb cut-outs of the late period.

The Fondation Beyeler has succeeded in bringing together a large number of loans from American and European museums, supplemented by generous loans from many private collectors.

The exhibition is organized in cooperation with K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. The exhibition was curated for the Fondation Beyeler by Christoph Vitali with the assistance of Ulf Küster and Philippe Büttner.

In a extremely sensitive response to the collection, its creators and the location, Renzo Piano has created an ideal building for presenting modern art. From outside, the approximately 127 metre-long building, which is shielded from traffic noise by a porphyry-clad external wall, resembles a ship lying anchored alongside the busy road.

On passing through the entrance gate, one finds oneself in the calm of an English-style landscape park. To the right, nestled among groups of trees, one sees the pavilion-like museum built out of a harmonious combination of stone, white-painted steel and glass. Its projecting glass roof, with a surface area of approximately 4,500 square metres, seems to float above its four monumental parallel walls.

Prof. Dr. Gottfried Boehm

Prof. Gottfried Boehm Professor für Neuere Kunstgeschichte und Ordinarius der Universität Basel. Studium der Kunstgeschichte, Philosophie, Germanistik in Köln, Wien und Heidelberg. Promotion 1968 in Philosophie. Habilitation 1974 in Kunstgeschichte in Heidelberg. Von 1975 bis 1979 zunächst Dozent, dann Professor für Kunstgeschichte an der Ruhr-Universität Bochum. 1979 bis 1986 Professor für Kunstgeschichte an der Justus-Liebig-Universität in Giessen. Arbeitsschwerpunkte: Bildgeschichte, Kunst der Renaissance, des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, zeitgenössische Kunst, Gattungsfragen , Methodologie und Hermeneutik, Kunsttheorie.

PUBLICATIONS INCLUDE:

Gadamer. Seminar philosophische Hermeneutik (1976), Studien zur Perspektivität. Philosophie und Kunst in der frühen Neuzeit (1969), Bildnis und Individuum. Über den Ursprung der Porträtmalerei in der italienischen Renaissance (1985), Paul Cézanne. Montagne Sainte-Victoire (1988), Was ist ein Bild? (1994), Beschreibungskunst - Kunstbeschreibung. Ekphrasis von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (1995), Willy Baumeister (1995), Morandi (1998), Ellsworth Kelly (2002).