Search results for ""Author Stephan Kunz""

Photographer and artist Andrea Garbald (1877–1958) dedicated an important part of his oeuvre to the women of his native Val Bregaglia, in the Swiss canton of Grisons. As the first and, for a long time, the only photographer in the valley, he ran his own photo studio in addition to an optician’s store in the village of Castasegna. Yet instead of making his artistic work public, Garbald kept his it in his attic. His estate was only discovered in the mid-1980s and displayed in public for the first time in 2014 in a major exhibition. Andrea Garbald’s portraits collected in this volume show women of different ages and social classes and go far beyond the stiff official portraits that were common at the time. The sitters’ posture, clothes, faces, and their eyes speak volumes: the photographs demonstrate a special intimacy and empathy towards the people portrayed. At the same time, they reveal the development of the medium and its visual language. This new book provides an in-depth look at Garbald’s unusual oeuvre and offers an insight into the subtle creativity of this local pioneer. Text in Italian and German.

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The oeuvre of Swiss artist Mirko Baselgia, born 1982, has been carefully selected, using a combination of different materials. With references to architecture, (art) history, and classical music, his sculptural works symbolise, both in form and substance, the relationship between the individual and the environment; while additionally reflecting current sociopolitical issues. Mirko Baselgia ranks among the top most promising young artists in Switzerland. He has recently been awarded the renowned Kiefer-Hablitzel Prize and the Manor Art Award Chur, and the Bundner Kunstmuseum Chur staged Baselgia's first solo museum exhibition in spring 2013. This first monograph presents a range of his work, further illustrated by a conversation between the artist, and curator Stephan Kunz.

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Andre Thomkins is renowned as an artist treating imagery, forms and materials as well as language in playful and experimental ways. His mastery of the classical visual art media was unparalleled, yet he also experimented with different techniques and materials. Within Thomkins's oeuvre, his works of the 1950s in particular are characterised by a pronounced love of experimentation. During this period, he developed his Lackskins by 'painting' with gloss paint on water. He had stumbled across this special technique by chance: cleaning his paint brushes in water, he noticed that the gloss paint he had used left a film on the surface that formed an image. He began deliberately manipulating that floating film of paint and eventually lifted the resulting image from the water with a sheet of paper, achieving 'something planetary, very light and fluctuating' (Andre Thomkins). This wonderful book, 'Andre Thomkins: Lackskins' is the first comprehensive presentation of these beautiful works. Text in English & German.

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Markus Raetz (1941–2020) is widely recognised as one of Switzerland’s most significant contemporary artists. His multifaceted oeuvre includes some 1,500 sculptures, installations, and objects. They are works that make us playfully aware of how strongly our perception of the world depends on the point of view we take. This bilingual French–German book, published in conjunction with a major Markus Raetz retrospective at the Kunstmuseum Bern in summer 2023, focuses on the artist’s objects and mobiles, most of which have only so far been sporadically on public display. Essays by curator Stephan Kunz and French art historian and curator Didier Semin explore this part of Raetz’s work and place it within the overall context of his art. These are complemented by images newly taken by Swiss photographer Alexander Jaquemet in Raetz’s preserved studio, thus providing a direct insight into the artist’s former working environment. Text in French and German.

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Wolfgang Laib (born 1950 in Germany) is considered to be one of the most important artists of today. His work is characterized by a profound relationship with nature and a declared belief in simplicity. Eastern philosophies from India have also shaped his life and his artistic practice since the 1970s. The artist continues today to concentrate on just a few cyclical groups of work. Ever since his journeys to India as a young man, Wolfgang Laib has been inspired by the idea of seeing humans as part of a larger whole. He also follows this way of life in his art: he tracks down the universal, the eternal, and works with natural materials such as pollen, rice, milk or bees wax. At the Bündner Kunstmuseum, he presents an extensive, room-sized installation made up of thousands of tiny rice mountains. An important foodstuff, rice symbolizes vitality and is fundamental for our earthly existence. The process of creating this work of art is revealed in the book and is related to a conversation between Wolfgang Laib and the internationally renowned Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. With this book, Wolfgang Laib reveals the spiritual dimension of art and leads us directly to the sources of his poetics.

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