Gertsch – Gauguin – Munch: Cut in Wood at LAC Lugano from May 12th to Sept 22nd

From 12 May through 22 September 2019 MASI (Museo d’arte della Svizzera Italiana) celebrates one of Switzerland’s most important contemporary artists, Franz Gertsch. The exhibition conceived by the artist himself and presented by him jointly with museum director Tobia Bezzola presents nine monumental engravings by Franz Gertsch with a selection of more than seventy woodcuts by Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch

The exhibition is inspired by the desire to celebrate the outstanding career of a key figure in contemporary art, in the wake of the artist’s 90th birthday, and is one of a series of exhibitions MASI dedicates to the history of Swiss art this year, beginning with a project focusing on Swiss Surrealism and ending with a look at the most relevant art being made today with a monographic exhibition of the work of Julian Charrière, born in 1987, in the autumn.

Franz Gertsch Triptychon Schwarzwasser 1992: Woodcut (three printing blocks, 237 x 185 cm each) 237 x 555 cm Blue-grey impression on Kumohadamashi Japan paper by Heizaburo Iwano: three sheets of 276 x 217 cm, right and left sheet cut to c. 276 x 203 cm Nr. 9 Private collection, courtesy Galleri K, Oslo © Franz Gertsch

Photo: Dominique Uldry

Swiss artist Franz Gertsch was asked to work with the museum not only as an artist, but as exhibition curator. The artist accepted the invitation and added an unexpected proposal: presentation of his woodcuts in dialogue with works by the artists he considers the absolute masters of engraving at the turn of the twentieth century, Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) and Edvard Munch (1863-1944).

This pairing might at first come as a surprise: Gauguin’s and Munch’s woodcuts are small to medium by size, characterized by stark and expressive lines and by often strikingly bold colour contrasts. Franz Gertsch’s monumental woodcuts on the other hand present us with vast monochrome surfaces dotted by myriads of tiny points of light. Yet beyond the historic distance and the differences in style that divide them, the three artists do indeed display profound affinities, beginning with their common mastery of woodcut technique and particularly with their desire to test its limits and broaden its horizons.

Paul Gauguin Women at the River [AUTI TE PAPE] 1893–1894 Colour woodcut on Japanese paper - Image: 20.5–20.7 x 35.6–36 cm; sheet: 25 x 39.8 cm From the suite Noa Noa Private collection, courtesy Galleri K, Oslo Photo: Reto Rodolfo Pedrini

Gauguin engraves blocks of wood using whatever tools he gets his hands on: chisels, knives, sandpaper, awls, continually reworking them, even during the printing process.

Edvard Munch The Girls on the Bridge [Pikene på broen] 1918 Combination print with colour woodcut and colour lithograph on wove paper Image: 49.5 x 43 cm; sheet: 70.5 x 59 cm - Private collection, courtesy Gallery K, Oslo Photo: Reto Rodolfo Pedrini

Munch breaks down the blocks he uses in his works into pieces so he can ink them with different colours and put them back together again like a puzzle, proceeding to print a multi-coloured image in a single step. Both of them overturn the canons of woodcutting established since the fifteenth century, and Gertsch does them same in 1985 when he decides to stop making the big realistic paintings he has been famous for since the seventies and explore woodcutting technique.

Like his predecessors, Gertsch comes up with a revolutionary way of making his engravings: by entirely avoiding line, the artist engraves an extremely dense pattern of dots on the block, creating light areas which are modulated to allow the image to form. In view of the meticulous proceeding involved in this technique and the monumental scale of the blocks, it takes the artist about a year to make each of his woodcuts. Gertsch produces prints in different colours from each block, using inks he makes himself printed on huge sheets of paper made especially for him by a Japanese papermaker: the result of this laborious proceeding is a series of immersive works offering a unique visual experience inviting contemplation.

The themes of Gertsch’s, Gauguin’s and Munch’s works reveal an underlying range of common themes: an intense interweave of melancholy and eros, a mystic vision of landscape and nature, experienced as the primordial source of inspiration, and an expression of the artist’s deep solitude and his alienation from society.

LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura Piazza Bernardino Luini 6 CH- 6901 Lugano Opening hours : Tuesday - Sunday: 10:00 - 18:00 Open until 20:00 on Thursdays (Monday closed)

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