Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft - Böcker

Her sensual Nanas—buxom, colorful female figures laid the foundation for her international success beyond the art world: Niki de Saint Phalle. But the self-taught artist’s creative spectrum is much broader, and her unconventional oeuvre, ranging from painting and drawing to assemblages, performances, theatre, film, and architecture, is more subversive and critical of society than is widely assumed. Based on her efforts to process her own feelings, she addressed social and political issues, critically questioning institutions and role models in ways that are as relevant today as they have ever been. The exhibition and the publication shed new light on the artist’s exceptional personality and uncover the wide-ranging oeuvre of the popular outsider—that is always surprising and eccentric, emotional, dark and brutal, humorous and cheerful.

Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism – these are still the most important stylistic labels which acted as slogans for French painting during the 19th century. At that time Delacroix, Courbet, Manet and many others left the “straight and narrow” of painting, the academic-neo-classical manner. Highly controversial at the time, today these painters are celebrated worldwide as precursors of Modernism. The situation is very different when it comes to the Salon painters like Meissonier, Cabanel, Gérôme and Bouguereau, who were highly regarded at the time. Today they have been consigned to the fringes, especially in the German-speaking region – unjustifiably, because they play an outstanding role with regard to our understanding of developments in art at the time.

Inspiration Islam – European artists in dialogue with Islamic art and culture. The art and architecture of the Islamic world strongly influenced the development of Western modernism. Some 170 works from the mid-19th century to the present day illustrate this fascinating cultural exchange. Beguiling examples of fine and decorative art reflect the diversity of this lively transfer. During the 19th century, Europe became caught up not only in Orientalism, but also in a real “Islamophilia”. Important collections of Islamic art were established. With the approach of modernism the view of these “foreign” influences changed. Artists of the avant-garde and masters of applied art sought inspiration for their own new style in the wealth of formal language and colourfulness characterized by Islamicate art. Positions of contemporary art to current Islamic discourse round out this multi-faceted publication. ARTISTS INCLUDE: Nevin Aladag | Baltensperger and Siepert | Marwan Bassiouni | Carlo Bugatti | Théodore Deck | Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo | Osman Hamdi Bey | Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann | Wassily Kandinsky | Gulsun Karamustafa | Bouchra Khalili | Paul Klee | J.& L. Lobmeyr | Henri Matisse | Gabriele Munter | Lotte Reiniger et. al.