On display Charles Gleyre La danse des bacchantes (The Dance of the Bacchants), 1849 An exclusively female affair, the bacchanal takes place under the implacable gaze of a hieratic priestess who is the guardian of the altar supporting the…
Félix Vallotton La chaste Suzanne (The Chaste Susanna), 1922 The act of seeing – from dazzlement to the risk of unhinging reason – is the guiding thread of the biblical story that Vallotton, now…
Christian Boltanski Réserve des Suisses morts (Reserve of Dead Swiss), 1990 Christian Boltanski was a painter before turning to photography and film. He is renowned for his installations that are part inventory, part archive, exploring our…
Bruce Nauman Raw Material « MMMM », 1990 Raw Material ‘MMMM’ is part of a series of six video installations in which Bruce Nauman combines the movement of the body and vocal exercises.…
On display Daniel Spoerri Aktion Restaurant Spoerri. Tableau-piège (Aktion Restaurant Spoerri. Trap-Painting), 1972 In 1960, Pierre Restany and Yves Klein created the new realist group. Many artists, including Daniel Spoerri, Arman, Martial Raysse and Jean Tinguely, signed the…
Arnulf Rainer Nackenhaar (Neck Hair), 1975 From as early as 1952, Arnulf Rainer developed a painting style typified by the nervous energy of the artistic process. His work on reproductions of…
On display Ernest Biéler Femme en bleu (Woman in Blue), 1913 Ernest Biéler’s dire financial situation forced him to leave Paris in 1892. He returned to Switzerland, yet happiness eluded him, whether in Geneva, where he…
Aloïse (Aloïse Corbaz, dite) Sphinx Fath – Marie Stuart. Feuille du rouleau double face Le Réveillon avec toi (Sphinx-Fath – Mary Stuart. Sheet of double-sided roll Christmas Eve with You), 1950 Throughout her life, Aloïse was fascinated by needle and thread. Trained at the Professional Couture School in Lausanne, she made her dresses herself and was…
On display Émilienne Farny Rue de l’Armorique (Façade), c. 1970 From 1962 to 1972 Émilienne Farny lived in Paris, in the 14th arrondissement. As a painter, her focus was always on reality. In the French…
Gustave Buchet Sculpto-peinture – abstraite – (Sculpto-Painting – Abstract –), 1923–4 In the early 1920s Gustave Buchet painted several flat-surfaced canvases, some of them tending towards abstraction. At the same time, he was involved in projects…
Louis Soutter Où sont nos sens? (Where Are Our Senses?), between 1930 and 1937 Soutter was interned in Ballaigues, where he suffered cruelly from the narrow confines of his existence. He adopted an ascetic way of living, forcing himself to…
Alfredo Jaar Real Pictures, 1995-2007 Alfredo Jaar’s public interventions, installations, photographs and videos all explore the nature of images and our relationship to them. His work closely follows current events…
Esther Shalev-Gerz White Out – Between Telling and Listening, 2002 Esther Shalev-Gerz was born in Lithuania, brought up in Israel, and now lives in Paris. Her art explores the construction of individual and collective memories.…
On display Luciano Castelli Haarzupfer (Hair Fleecing), 1973 Like Urs Lüthi, who also came from Lucerne, Castelli began his career in the early 1970s with representations of his own body, whether in performances…
On display Tadeusz Kantor Multipart, 1970 A visual artist and creator of happenings, Tadeusz Kantor was a major figure on the Polish experimental theatre scene as production designer, director and author.…
Alice Bailly Les rythmiciennes (The Rhythmicians), 1918-1919 Published in 1918 by Albert Rheinwald, the first monograph on Bailly insists on the originality of her most recent work: ‘[B]efore our eyes wool becomes…
On display Marcel Broodthaers Le drapeau noir (Black Flag), 1968 In 1968 Marcel Broodthaers started making plastic panels onto which he thermoformed texts sometimes accompanied by an image or punctuation marks, in the manner of…
On display Janos Urban Construction n° 6, 1969 In 1956 Janos Urban reached Switzerland as a political refugee from his native Hungary. Having begun his artistic training in Budapest, he now continued at…
Eduardo Arroyo Robinson Crusoé, 1965 The figure: a man dressed in animal skins, with rags wrapped around his feet and a Tyrolean style hat with feathers on his head. His…
Maurice Utrillo Paysage, Corse (Landscape, Corsica), 1913 As a teenager, Maurice Utrillo was encouraged to paint by his mother, Suzanne Valadon, a model and self-taught artist, who hoped that it would have…
On display Gustave Buchet Danseuse en mouvement (Dancer in Motion), 1918 Trained at the École des beaux-arts in Geneva, Gustave Buchet first stayed in Paris in winter 1910. In 1915 he was in Geneva as cofounder…
Charles Blanc-Gatti Suite bergamasque de Debussy (Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque), c. 1930 In 1911 Charles Blanc-Gatti moved to Paris, then in a state of artistic effervescence, where he worked as a draughtsman. After a period working in…
Louis Soutter Avril (April), between 1923 and 1930 Soutter was fifty-two years old when he was interned against his will in 1923. This mature and extremely cultivated man was about to produce a…
Albert Marquet Notre-Dame, temps de neige (Notre Dame under Snow), c. 1914 By January 1908 Albert Marquet was living on the fifth floor at 19 Quai Saint-Michel. He approached the scene in Paris as a totality, as…
On display Gustave Courbet Le vieil arbre dans la gorge (The Old Tree in the Gorge), 1871 From the early 1840s on, Gustave Courbet’s paintings expressed both the vagaries of collective history and his own inner torment. His landscapes and still lifes…
Eugène Grasset Affiche pour une exposition d’art décoratif français à la Grafton Gallery de Londres (Poster for an Exhibition of French Decorative Art at the Grafton Gallery, London), 1893 Eugène Grasset made his first forays into poster design in the mid-1880s and soon acquired an excellent reputation, working both commercially and for publishers as…
On display François Bocion Filets et pêcheurs (Nets and Fishermen), c. 1877 François Bocion’s painting depicts an everyday fishing scene, a common theme in his work from the 1860s on. A young fisherman just back from an…
