Artists

Max Ernst, Ferdinand Hodler, Robert Ryman, Constantin Brancusi, Wassily Kandinsky, Alberto Giacometti, Giorgio de Chirico, Mark Rothko, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Claude Monet, Wolfgang Laib, Lee Ufan, Verena Loewensberg, Fra Angelico, Matteo di Giovanni, Philippe de Champaigne, Piet Mondrian, Barnett Newman

Press release

As part of the ReCollect! series, the works of Wolfgang Laib are brought into dialogue with masterpieces from the Kunsthaus Zürich Collection. Since the late 1970s, Laib has created radically reduced, quietly powerful works using pollen, beeswax, milk, rice and stone. Laib’s works enter into a transhistorical dialogue with around 30 pieces from the Collection – from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Some 50 key works convey Laib’s artistic vocabulary: a large-scale pollen work, a Brahmanda (egg-shaped stone sculpture), Milkstone, Ziggurat, a walk-through wax room, rice houses, a lacquer stair, and other sculptures, drawings and photographs. Complementing these are formative works of Asian art, particularly from India – including a major loan from the Museum Rietberg: an important Jain marble statue of Jina Rishabha. The exhibition on the 1st floor of the Müller building is curated by Laib himself in collaboration with Senior Curator Collection Philippe Büttner. Their long-standing partnership, first evident in a major retrospective at the Fondation Beyeler in 2005, continues here in a dialogue spanning seven centuries of art. Visitors will not only experience Laib’s sculptural gestures and materials in new depth, but also discover unexpected facets of the Collection.