They determine the climate of our planet Earth and are part of our everyday life: water, clouds and wind in all their forms. They have fascinated mankind since time immemorial and are reflected in art.
Water is a key element of human history. Thanks to its many manifestations (as spring water, river, stream, ocean, but also in the swamp, as spray or still lake), water found a rich expression in the formation of symbols: in mythology, religion, philosophy, art and psychology. It is closely connected with concepts such as creation and destruction, life and death, fertility and transience, as well as with the subconscious. The history of its development and use goes back to the earliest settlements.
In interaction with the water are the wind in its manifestations, which can express themselves as a whirlwind as well as in the eerie calm, and also the clouds with their constant shape changes and their volatility. Beneficial and yet also ominous, these phenomena inspire the myths, literary texts and works of art of every region and every era.
The works in the Würth Collection contain a multitude of references to these natural phenomena, a selection of which is now on display at Forum Würth Rorschach.
Landscape is the major theme of “Lotte” (Copi; 1924-2019). After studying at the Academy and School of Arts and Crafts in Stuttgart, her life’s path led to France via Africa to California and finally back to the Côte d’Azur.
Experienced moments and personal impressions are reflected in Lotte’s œuvre. Like a kind of travel diary, she has recorded the landscapes she has seen as reminiscent impressions on canvas or paper. With her radiant, spontaneous painting style, she captures the beauty of nature.
Further information on the accompanying events can be found here.
The Berlin-based artist Christopher Lehmpfuhl (*1972) is regarded as a shooting star of contemporary realism. Unusual for a contemporary artist, he paints outdoors (plein air). In all weathers, he applies thick layers of oil paint by hand directly onto the canvas, creating sculptural urban and natural landscapes full of light. The exhibition at Forum Würth Arlesheim comprises around 35 paintings from the Würth Collection, complemented by various loans from the artist’s own studio.
For more information about the exhibition click here.
The work of the Austrian artist Gunter Damisch (1958-2016) represents a cosmos of its own, oscillating between sculpture, graphics, drawing and painting. In his paintings you can find color-intensive structures and forms, which sometimes remind of a view through a microscope. They show a section of the big whole, which is captured by the artist at a particular moment. The titles of the paintings poetically complement the narrative moment.
This level unfolds its richness of form not only in the artist’s paintings and drawings, but is also transferred into three-dimensionality. Here, the microcosm suddenly evolves into a self-contained macrocosm, where the artist’s passion for small found objects from nature gives rise to new worlds made of cones, flowers, stems, or even animal bones. Cast in bronze and aluminum, they become a piece of eternity.
The monographic exhibition at Forum Würth Rorschach is based on 42 works by Gunter Damisch, which have been part of the Würth Collection for many years and also represent one of the most important focal points of the collection – Austrian art.
More information on the exhibition can be found here.
Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Günter Grass
and Hermann Hesse at the würth collection
The exhibition Literature for the Eye presents three well-known writers in an unusual guise. It focuses not on the internationally acknowledged literary work of Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Günter Grass and Hermann Hesse, but on their less familiar activity as visual artists. The authors’ approaches to their artistic work differ strongly. Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s machines involving written and spoken words form a kind of playful digression generating what he calls “linguistic dances”. Günter Grass, who started by studying art, attached equal importance to his literary and artistic activities, combining both in many works throughout his career. Hermann Hesse came to painting by way of a personal crisis and, although he regarded himself as nothing more than a “dilettante” in the field, noted in retrospect in 1924 that “I would not have got as far as I did as a writer without painting”. That statement might stand as a general motto for all three authors’ engagement with the visual arts, which revolved principally around a fruitful interaction between the two artistic disciplines.
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