Swiss Art

The opening of the Paul Klee Centre in Bern in July 2005 was an important page in the history of 21st century museum life. In the eyes of its creators, this contemporary museum was to act as a cultural forum, enabling visitors to develop their creative potential through in-depth acquaintance with the artistic legacy of Paul Klee.

The exhibition 'Alberto Giacometti. Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings" is the latest in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts' series of large-scale international projects, which in themselves reflect much more than ideas brought about by the long examination of its own collections. The museum researchers' inquiring minds and painstaking efforts have always been aimed at projects illustrating different stages of arts history that fill in the gaps of the museum's existing displays. Such projects introducing Modernist artists and classics of 20th-century avant-garde art have included exhibitions devoted to Pablo Picasso (the first in Russia), Amedeo Modigliani, Raoul Dufy, Joan Miro, Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Piet Mondrian, and Andy Warhol. 40 years ago such shows were a veritable cultural shock, a bold display of a different art language against the background of the 'aestheti-cized mythology" of the totalitarian state.

The exhibition "Paul Klee. Carpet of Memory',' which ran at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, brought to a thrilling conclusion the oriental "Grand tour" the Zentrum Paul Klee initiated with the exhibition "In Search of the Orient" and which leads visitors through time and space. The focus of this particular exhibition is the oeuvre of Paul Klee and the works that emerged from his trip to Tunisia in 1914 and Egypt in 1928, as well as his later exploration of a host of Orient-inspired themes. The exhibition also includes early Orient-themed photographs and examines the image of the Orient that photography helped to convey.

The Zentrum Paul Klee celebrates its 5 years with the exhibition "Klee meets Picasso" - an homage to two giants of art history, presenting these two imposing exponents of modern art and taking as its theme Klee's analysis of Picasso. The exhibition reveals unknown interwoven links between Klee and Picasso. It comprises over 180 works from the Zentrum Paul Klee, from numerous museums and private collections, such as famous collections in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum Picasso, Barcelona, the Museum Berggruen and the Neue National Galerie, Berlin and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. The exhibition project is supported by the Picasso und Klee families.

Masterpieces from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art at Martigny
By lending 50 masterpieces of Western European art to the Fondation Pierre Gianadda the world-famous Metropolitan Museum is sending out a clear message: it trusts the foundation implicitly. The memory of the mysterious story (with a happy ending) when the collection of French paintings from Moscow's Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts was arrested after the closure of the exhibition remains fresh in the minds of many. At the time, some Russian journalists and museum officials said in no uncertain terms that the Swiss partner did not quite live up to the standards of the Pushkin museum.

Hans Holbein in Basel
From April  1 to July 2, the Kunstmuseum Basel hosted an exhibition dedicated to Hans  Holbein the Younger. There are many reasons why the exhibition occurred in  Basel: Holbein, born in the German town of Augsburg in 1497 (or 1498), moved to  the Swiss city-republic of Basel in 1514 with his brother Ambrosius, who was  also a painter. Erasmus of Rotterdam also lived in Basel; the city had a  university and excellent publishing houses.