Exhibition preview 2021 | Kunstmuseum Bern and Zentrum Paul Klee

Meret Oppenheim — Max Bill — Annemarie Schwarzenbach — Contemporary art from North- and South Korea as well as Latin America — August Gaul’s animal sculptures — Adolf Wölfli

The two major Bern art museums Kunstmuseum Bern and Zentrum Paul Klee are presenting a first-class exhibition programme for 2021. The main focus is on Swiss artists in monographic exhibitions of Meret Oppenheim at the Kunstmuseum Bern and Max Bill and Annemarie Schwarzenbach at the Zentrum Paul Klee. Further highlights are the exhibitions Tools for Utopia showing works from Latin America as well as the exhibition on North and South Korean art from the Sigg collection.

The Kunstmuseum Bern and the Zentrum Paul Klee will be starting the year with journeys to distant destinations. Tools for Utopia at the Kunstmuseum Bern takes visitors to Latin America and shows how art becomes a tool for cultural, social and political change. In spring, the exhibition Border Crossings sets visitors on a journey through contemporary North and South Korean art, showing selected works from the Sigg Collection. Annemarie Schwarzenbach has become known as a traveller, author and perhaps the most colourful figure in Swiss modern cultural history. Due to the great interest of the public, the exhibition Departure without Destination. Annemarie Schwarzenbach as photographer at the Zentrum Paul Klee will be extended and modified with new loans as of 2021.

In autumn, world-renowned Swiss artists Max Bill and Meret Oppenheim will be in focus. The Zentrum Paul Klee will be presenting a monographic show on design icon Max Bill and, for the first time, broach the issue of his global network. The exhibition will be as versatile as his work – aside from paintings and sculptures, it also includes designs for posters, fonts and furniture.

Meret Oppenheim. My exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Bern is the first transatlantic retrospective of the artist that covers all the phases of her work comprehensively. ‘Freedom is not given to you’, the artist said in 1975, ‘you have to take it.’ The exhibition shows Oppenheim’s radically open concept of art. It is conceived in collaboration with the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Menil Collection in Houston.

Further shows at the Kunstmuseum Bern are an exhibition on August Gaul’s animal sculptures which takes up current debates on the relationship between humans and animals, as well as a cooperation with the University of Bern on the Berne Tablet of Cebes and baroque imagery. The Zentrum Paul Klee will be showing the most important works of Art brut artist Adolf Wölfli and Paul Klee’s grandson Aljoscha Ségard. The exhibitions on Paul Klee approach the issue of "primordial beginnings of art" and reflect on human coexistence.