Homage to Ernst Scheidegger at the Art Museum in Lugano
Published: Friday, Feb 16th 2024, 11:10
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Cuno Amiet, Fernand Léger, Alberto Giacometti: probably the most important Swiss photographer of the 20th century once captured them all with his camera. Now the Lugano Art Museum is dedicating a tribute to Ernst Scheidegger.
It is an atypical picture: steep snow-covered slopes, a church that almost disappears in its winter dress. No people, no animals far and wide. The Verzasca Valley. Ernst Scheidegger did not become famous for his landscape photography, however, but for his numerous portraits of artists.
Many of them were commissioned by magazines such as "Du" from the second half of the 1950s onwards. They include Max Bill climbing his sculpture with a ladder and his close friend Alberto Giacometti.
The curatorial team Tobia Bezzola and Taisse Grandi Venturi juxtapose some of the photographs with works by the artists portrayed. Most of them are on loan from the Kunsthaus Zürich. This trick creates a kind of dialog between the photographer Scheidegger and the artists he portrays, explained Grandi Venturi at the media conference in Lugano.
The show, which was already on display at the Kunsthaus Zürich in the fall on the occasion of the photographer's 100th birthday in collaboration with the Ernst Scheidegger Archive Foundation, is therefore called "Faccia a faccia" - "Eye to eye" in Lugano.
Focus on the early creative phase
In addition to the previously unpublished seven photographs from the Verzasca Valley, the selection of images is also somewhat different than in Zurich, said director and co-curator Bezzola. With a total of 100 photographs, the exhibition is also more comprehensive than in the city on the Limmat. Most of them date from the years 1945 to 1955.
Scheidegger's interest in people is already evident in this early creative phase. The photographer, who worked for the Magnum agency, documented the exhaustion and hunger for life of Europeans after the end of the Second World War. This can be seen in "March of the Salvation Army", a picture showing an elderly man with almost no teeth and a doubtful look on his face.
Ernst Scheidegger is regarded as an extremely multifaceted personality. In addition to photography, he also worked as a graphic artist and filmmaker, and later became a gallery owner and publisher.
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