Anniversary Exhibition – Special Guest Duane Hanson
30 October 2022 – 8 January 2023
The Fondation Beyeler this year celebrates its 25th anniversary with the most comprehensive exhibition of works from its collection to date. Taking up almost the entire exhibition space of the museum, it will feature approximately 100 works by more than 30 artists – from classics of modern art to recent acquisitions of contemporary art. Among others, major works by Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne, Henri Rousseau, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois will be set in relation to contemporary positions by Marlene Dumas, Anselm Kiefer, Roni Horn, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Tacita Dean, Rachel Whiteread, Wolfgang Tillmans, and others. The exhibition thus provides a unique opportunity to experience the collection of the Fondation Beyeler in its depth and impressive quality. The anniversary exhibition will be further enriched by the integration of several hyperrealist sculptures by American artist Duane Hanson. This “exhibition within the exhibition” opens up surprising perspectives on the Fondation Beyeler’s artworks, architecture, staff and visitors.
As one of the foremost art dealers of his time, together with his wife Hildy Ernst Beyeler assembled one of the most significant collections of modern art worldwide. Since 1997, the collection has been housed at the Fondation Beyeler, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano. The collection ranges from impressionism and postimpressionism to classical modernism and contemporary art. The collection’s scope and reputation have since grown steadily with new acquisitions of works by distinguished artists. It now numbers approximately 400 works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, spanning painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, film and installations. The anniversary exhibition brings together many of its key pieces.
Curated by Raphaël Bouvier, the exhibition extends over a total of 20 galleries, devoting dedicated rooms to major groups of works by individual artists such as Paul Klee, Joan Miró, Mark Rothko and Marlene Dumas. Claude Monet’s celebrated water lily triptych will be shown in one room alongside other key works by the artist, as will Henri Matisse’s late work with his famous cut-outs. One room will also be dedicated to Alberto Giacometti’s iconic group of sculptures.
Few artists made a bigger mark on 20th-century art than Pablo Picasso. More than 30 of his works are held by the Fondation Beyeler, which thus houses one of the most significant Picasso collections. Many of these key works will be displayed. Other rooms will focus on individual art movements such as postimpressionism, early abstraction or pop art, with artists such as Edgar Degas, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, and Andy Warhol. Works by distinguished contemporary artists such as Leonor Antunes, Louise Bourgeois, Tacita Dean, Roni Horn and Anselm Kiefer will be shown in special pairings.
Finally, the anniversary exhibition will for the first time present some recently acquired works, among them British artist Rachel Whiteread’s sculptural installation Poltergeist, 2020, as well as Pierre Bonnard’s significant painting La Source ou Nu dans la baignoire, 1917, the museum’s first purchase of a work of classical modernism since the death of Ernst and Hildy Beyeler.
Amounting to an “exhibition within the exhibition”, 13 hyperrealist sculptures by influential American artist Duane Hanson (1925–1996) will be displayed at selected locations in the museum. On loan from the artist’s estate as well as private collections and museums, the sculptures will engage in direct dialogue with works from the collection and the museum’s architecture, forming a condensed Hanson retrospective. It is the first time ever that a representative group of Hanson’s sculptures is shown in the context of a museum collection.
Duane Hanson is a leading exponent of American post-war sculpture and is regarded as a founder of hyperrealism within pop art. Beginning in the late 1960s, he created life-size human figures of startling realism. Using what were then novel materials such as polyester resin and polyvinyl chloride, he reproduced the human body in faithful detail, giving his sculptures a deceptively genuine appearance by using real clothes and accessories. Hanson took on timely issues of American and Western society, expressing both explicit and implicit criticism of social conditions. His interest lay with the socially disadvantaged, marginalised and oppressed but also with those embodying the middle class, whom he captured in everyday situations Hanson blurred the boundaries between art and reality, triggering a wide array of reactions in viewers, ranging from shock and irritation to profound concern and tender affection.
The range and ambivalence of these experiences also become manifest in the encounter orchestrated between Hanson’s figures and the Fondation Beyeler’s artworks and architecture. While some of the sculptures operate as disturbing and radical statements making a stand against acute and still current social ills, others function as tributes to the different people one may encounter in a museum, from visitors to the employees whose work behind the scenes keeps things running smoothly. One room thus features Hanson’s sculpture of an elderly couple sitting exhausted on a bench contemplating one of the Beyeler Collection’s Rothko paintings. In another room, an old woman has sat down next to the celebrated portrait of Cézanne’s wife and adopted her pose. The sculpture of a janitor can be seen cleaning the windows of the museum façade, and a mother with a pram has joined Giacometti’s famous group of figures.