Alberto Giacometti

17th October 2014 - 26th January 2015
www.leopoldmuseum.org

In cooperation with the Kunsthaus Zürich and the Alberto Giacometti Foundation, Zurich

With the exhibition »Alberto Giacometti. Pioneer of the Avant-Garde« the Leopold Museum shines the spotlight on an artist who is widely considered to be the most important sculptor of the 20th century. The works of Alberto Giacometti (1901 – 1966) are among the most expensive artworks in the world. As recently as 2010 his work »L‘homme qui marche l« fetched the astronomical sum of 74 million Euros at Sotheby's in London, the highest price ever paid for a sculpture.

Born in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, Giacometti moved to Paris in the early 1920s, where he initially joined the circle of artists surrounding André Breton. In the exhibition Giacometti’s Surrealist works are juxtaposed with works from the same period created by his friends and acquaintances, including René Magritte, Max Ernst and Joan Miró. Following his break with the Surrealists in 1935, Giacometti arrived at the inimitable style of his mature period during the 1940s. While he refocused on representational depictions of human figures, he did so in an entirely unique manner characterized by striking changes in proportions. Many of these works have a strong three-dimensional effect which is highlighted in the exhibition through the special positioning and staging of his works. At the same time, Giacometti’s sculptures, paintings and drawings will be juxtaposed with works by masters of International Modernism, including Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock and Cy Twombly.

AND YET THERE WAS ART! Austria 1914–1918

9th of May to 15th of September 2014
http://www.leopoldmuseum.org/

The assassination of the Austrian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, on the 28th of June 1914 in Sarajevo was the fatal trigger of World War I. One hundred years on, the Leopold Museum is dedicating a comprehensive exhibition to the fate of Austrian artists who were active between 1914 and 1918.

The war experiences of Egon Schiele, Albin Egger-Lienz and Anton Kolig provide the starting point for the exhibition. »I am a soldier now and have just lived through the hardest 14 days of my life« Schiele wrote in 1915. During his military service he painted Russian prisoners of war as well as his superiors. Anton Kolig reported from the war zone in 1916: »I am painting in great distress«. Albin Egger-Lienz, meanwhile, pondered the »unyielding stride of eternal fate« on the Italian frontline. While war painters depicted the horrors of war, large-scale art exhibitions were organized in Austria and in neutral countries abroad. Even at the height of the war, Kolo Moser painted works of intense coloring. At the same time, Gustav Klimt worked on his female portraits, allegories and late Attersee landscapes. When Klimt died in February 1918, Schiele drew the artist on his deathbed. In October of the same year he captured his fatally ill wife Edith. Both succumbed that same month – shortly before the end of the war – to the Spanish Flu.

Selected works by contemporary artists from Italy, Romania, Russia and Serbia – the countries that Austria-Hungary fought on the frontlines during World War I – create a connection to the present. Presented in the exhibition are 200 works, 40 of which hail from the collection of the Leopold Museum, 30 from the Leopold Collection II and 130 from public and private Austrian and international lenders. The historical objects are complemented by contemporary art interventions.

Kokoschka. The Self in Focus

4 October 2013 – 27 January 2014
www.leopoldmuseum.org

 The Leopold Museum dedicates to Oskar Kokoschka an exhibition that focuses on photographs from his life for the first time.

 Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980) was one of the most important Austrian artists of the 20th century. He numbers amongst the main protagonists of the Modern era. His works are world-famous. One little known fact is that Kokoschka's life and creative work is documented in an extensive series of photos. From the artist's estate, which is located in the Vienna University for Applied Arts, the Leopold Museum has created the exhibition "Kokoschka. The Self in Focus": unique photos and whole photographic series are directly compared against the works of the artist. The exhibition presents, for example, some of the famous portraits of Kokoschka, the creation of which can be traced in detail through photos of the portrait sittings. Some of the photographs were taken by renowned photographers. Anonymous snapshots are also amongst the images. The photos placed alongside Kokoschka's paintings and graphics to provide additional information.

Clouds

22 .03.2013 - 01.07.2013
http://www.leopoldmuseum.org

From 1800 landscape painting experienced an impressive heyday. Within this genre, artists paid increasing attention to the motif of clouds. These strange, elusive formations consisting of water, air and light appear as conveyors of different emotions and messages. Bushy clouds in a sunny sky contribute significantly to the positive atmosphere of a landscape and seem to be an almost indispensible feature in idyllic depictions of nature. A sky traversed by dark rain and thunder clouds, on the other hand, is perceived as threatening, while a band of clouds bathed in the glow of the red evening light sets a melancholy mood. Bizarre cloud formations, in turn, can be interpreted as enigmatic signs, as mysterious messages and warnings of imminent danger. A sense of foreboding is also conveyed by masses of clouds that appear out of control, occasioned either by natural disasters or by man as a result of technical intervention, such as exhaust fumes and atomic explosions.

The exhibition seeks to shed light on these different aspects of cloud depictions with a great variety of select examples of European and American painting and photography from 1800 to today. The presentation features works by Caspar David Friedrich, William Turner, Gustave Courbet, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Edvard Munch, Emil Nolde, René Magritte, Salvador Dali.