Kunstmuseum Luzern – författare

Sonja Sekula (1918-63) was born and educated in Lucerne, Switzerland, but emigrated to the United States with her parents in 1936. In 1941, she began studying art at the Arts Students League in New York and made the acquaintance of Andre Breton and his friends among the surrealists. Her automatic paintings and texts soon captured the interest of Peggy Guggenheim and Marcel Duchamp. In 1943, she was invited for the first time to show her work at Guggenheim's Art of This Century Gallery, and, throughout the late 1940s, she was also featured in solo and group exhibitions at Betty Parsons Gallery. However, mental health problems dogged her throughout her life, and she returned to Switzerland for treatment in 1955, where she committed suicide in 1963. This book provides a comprehensive overview of Sekula's art in context of the work of her friends and fellow artists from the period. Richly illustrated, it offers a chance to rediscover an immensely talented artist who has been unjustly neglected.

Swiss painter Robert Zund (1827-1909), also known in Switzerland as 'Master of the Beech Leaf', is revered for his light-flooded paintings of bucolic landscapes. Swiss photographer Tobias Madorin, born 1965, has gained international recognition for his tableau-like images that document the interaction between the inhabitants and their surrounding environment. This new book, published to coincide with an exhibition at Kunstmuseum Luzern in summer 2017, features work by both artists. Rather than merely enjoying the beauty of the sun-lit paradise Zund depicts in his precise manner, the book invites us to look more closely. For this purpose, Zund's paintings are juxtaposed with Madorin's photographs of the same views, captured today with an analogue large format camera. Thanks to the slowness of the procedure and the wealth of detail achieved in working with such an apparatus, Madorin's photographs boast an intensity comparable to that of Zund's paintings in terms of precision of the gaze. Observation, the gaze, and the aptitude to see is the real topic of this exhibition and accompanying book.