Gustave Courbet

7th September 2014 - 18th January 2015

www.fondationbeyeler.ch

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) is a key figure in art history. His provocative pictures, and his emphasis upon his individuality as an artist, make him one of the forerunners of modernism. He also broke with the conventions of Academy training. The exhibition dedicated to this early avant-gardist at the Fondation Beyeler brings together self-portraits, representations of women, grotto pictures and seascapes. It focuses on Courbet’s strategy of ambiguity, and his innovative handling of paint. At the heart of the show is Courbet’s famous painting, L’origine du monde. An exhibition on Courbet’s years in self-imposed exile in Switzerland is running concurrently at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire in Geneva: Fall 2014 is ‘Courbet season’ in Geneva and Basel.

Odilon Redon

2 февраля 2014 - 18 мая 2014
www.fondationbeyeler.ch

Odilon Redon (1840-1916) is one of the most amazing artists of emerging Modernism. Marking the threshold between the 19th and the 20th centuries, the art of this leading protagonist of French Symbolism shows the interaction between tradition and innovation. The exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler, which brings together a large number of masterpieces, concentrates on Redon’s significance as a forerunner of Classic Modernism and therefore on his art’s avant-garde dimension. Characterised by caesura and contrasts, his ambivalent, enigmatic work evolves from the palette of blacks of his early charcoal drawings and lithographs to the explosive colourfulness of his later pastels and oil paintings. His works alternate between eeriness and serenity, featuring bizarre monsters as well as heavenly creatures and intermingling dream and nightmare, nature and imagination.