The Beauty of the Alps

The Bündner Kunstmuseum in Chur is having a large extension built and will be closed for construction until June 2016. In the meantime, it will make a guest appearance at the Kunsthaus in Zug. Giovanni Segantini and the Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner sought and found what from their perspective as city dwellers was the Alps, up to the present day. Segantini’s œuvre influenced the young Giovanni Giacometti, Hermann Scherer and Albert Müller and the works of Alberto and Diego Giacometti, although both consorted with the Parisian avant-garde.
In the large-scale black-and-white photographs by Hans Danuser, Gaudenz Signorell and Guido Baselgia, the landscape sometimes virtually dissolves into a structure or cipher conveying images of erosion, sediments and the traces of water. Jean-Frédéric Schnyder is another artist preoccupied with the question of how landscape can be depicted today. He answers from a Zug perspective with a series of oil paintings – views of Lake Zug at sunrise, a new acquisition by Zug Canton.

In the last gallery, a colourful abstract work and a summer landscape constructed in mosaic-like fashion by Augusto Giacometti will be juxtaposed with landscapes by his contemporary Gustav Klimt. New paintings will forge a link between the historical works and the present.