Vera Isler
Face to Face II
1 February - 6 May 2012In co-operation with Museum der Moderne, Salzburg (Austria)
The most notable characteristics of the portraits in Vera Isler’s Face to Face series are their intensity and their naturalness. Described by the artist as “portraits for me alone”, they were created without assistance, without artificial light and thus without distraction. As documents of Vera Isler’s encounters with various artists, they capture very personal feelings and states of mind with “heartfelt and wordless discretion”. They compel not only their subjects but also their beholders into a state of repose, attention and sincerity. On display at the Museum Tinguely are the largescale photographs of the second “Face to Face” series.
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Kienholz
The Signs of the Times
22 February - 13 May 2012An exhibition mounted by the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, in cooperation with the Museum Tinguely, Basel
The oeuvre created by the American concept and object artist Edward Kienholz (1927–1994) from the mid-1950s onwards is strongly polarizing and rebellious in character. Central to his work, which
from 1972 was executed in collaboration with his wife Nancy Reddin Kienholz, are religion, war, death, sex and the degenerate sides of society. As well as being members of the same generation, Kienholz and Tinguely shared a bond of friendship and of respect for the (differing) radicality of each other’s artistic creativity. The exhibition shows work from the period 1960–1994, notably a number of impressive smaller sculptures in conjunction with a series of the expansive and spectacular “moral tableaus” and, furthermore, the Concept Tableau The American Trip, a work from 1966 co-created and co-signed by Jean Tinguely.
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Vladimir Tatlin
new art for a new world
6 June - 14 October 2012Counter-reliefs – Tower – Letatlin: These were the three most important creations of the Russian artist Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953). They stand at the centre of this exhibition, which is the first for 20 years to offer a comprehensive survey of the work of an artist who was one of the most important figures of the early twentieth-century avant-garde. Many of the most important loans have come
from major Russian museums.
With his counter-reliefs Tatlin not only played havoc with the laws of painting but also brought into being a new artistic genre and forged a new understanding of artistic material. Furthermore, with his visionary, unrealized project for a monumental tower to be devoted to the propagation of the ideals and goals of the Russian Revolution, he won himself a place in the dreams of generations of architects, visual artists and writers, bursting the boundaries between fields of art by introducing elements such as rhythm and movement into the field of sculpture. With the Letatlin, a utopian flying machine that never left the ground, his intention was to give individuals the feeling of flying.
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Tinguely@Tinguely
A new look at Jean Tinguely's work
7 November 2012 - 3 February 2013When the Museum Tinguely was opened in October 1996, it already possessed the world’s largest collection of Jean Tinguely’s artistic work. In the past sixteen years the collection has grown considerably, making an updated museum catalogue an urgent imperative. The new trilingual catalogue is to provide a comprehensive survey of the artist and his life, and of the museum’s collection and documentary archive. The publication will be accompanied by an exhibition of the Tinguely Collection, the first for a considerable time, spread over the entire display area. 20 years after Tinguely’s death, the new presentation will also reflect a revised view of his oeuvre. This new perspective will be enriched with an extended educational programme, in order to present the Collection in a new light for the upcoming generation.