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Art

Helvetia Art Collection on display in Paris

Switzerland is the guest of honour at the Art Paris Art Fair 2018. At this fair, Helvetia is displaying selected pieces of art from its corporate collection.

5 April 2018, author: Margrith Mermet, photos: Helvetia

The exhibit “Panorama”, which was curated specifically for the Art Paris Art Fair 2018, features 43 pieces in a range of media from paintings, drawings and photography to prints, videos and sculptures. “It provides an overview of our purchases in the last ten years”, explains Andreas Karcher, Director of the Art Division at Helvetia, “and thus reflects recent Swiss artistic work.”

Like the entire Swiss presence at the art fair in Paris, the exhibit was curated by Karine Tissot, director of the Centre d'Art Contemporain d'Yverdon-les-Bains, a contemporary art museum. The presentation of the works from Helvetia’s art collection is divided into three sections. They delineate possible Swiss landscapes and transition into each other. The first part of the exhibition presents the landscape through the eyes of the graphic artists. Adrian Schiess’s large-format piece dominates, and is framed by works by Francis Baudevin, Corsin Fontana, Aloïs Godinat and Alex Hanimann.

Leitmotif of Swiss art

The second part of the exhibit focuses on the Alps, which have been a leitmotif of Swiss art since the eighteenth century and continue to be a key theme today. The mountains are at times portrayed as romantic, idyllic, abstract or sublime. The pieces range from the soft watercolours of Michel Grillet to the impetuous sculpture by Christopher Füllemann, from the expressive brushstrokes of Conrad Jon Godlys to a virtual composition by the duo Studer/van den Berg.

The third and last part features only black-and-white works of art. It recalls the significance of drawing and lines for Swiss art in recent years. Hadrien Dussoix’s spray paint on canvas appears alongside a drawing in space photographed by Bernard Voïta and a filigree sculpture by Franziska Furter. “The exhibit is a wonderful opportunity to give the artgoing public in Paris a better understanding of Swiss contemporary art and make the Helvetia Art Collection well known”, said Andreas Karcher happily.