Zug04.05.2018

Vienna to Europe, Klimt and Schiele to Léger and Klee in the Collection

The Kunsthaus Zug is opening its doors to its very own treasure chest. On display is the modern Viennese world in all its depth, before and after the First World War, in times of great joy and great despair. The wider European world outside of Vienna will also be shown, as will the free spirit of the world at large, which the Second World War threatened to eradicate.

Works by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch are examples of the cultural interactions between Vienna and other European centers. Jewelry, silver and ceramics, along with beaming landscapes and blooming gardens. The beauty of one of Gustav Klimt’s dreamworlds wants to seduce whoever enters. Those who do will not just experience a rush of ecstasy, they will witness the fragility of man, seen for example in the group portrait with Arnold Schönberg by Richard Gerstl, or in the Expressionism of Egon Schiele or Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Here, hate and fear are widespread.
It’s no coincidence that passages into the basement, where the treasures are kept, are being opened in 2018. The Stiftung Sammlung Kamm is the code to the vaults. The foundation owns the most significant art collection of the Viennese Modern Age in Europe outside of Austria, along with groups of works of French Cubism and German Expressionism.

The foundation was founded in 1998 and has given its works to the Kunsthaus Zug as permanent loans. Here and there the collection provides evidence of the close friendship between the couple Fritz and Editha Kamm-Ehrbar, who resided in Zug, and the Viennese sculptor Fritz Wotruba. During World War II, he and his Jewish wife lived in exile in Zug. His work, his critique of the isolation from the Viennese art world and his opening up to Europe are keys to the collection of the Kunsthaus Zug.

Two new additions to the house collection will also be given their due: The around forty works by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Alfred Kubin, which the Kunsthaus Zug has newly received from the Zurich-based Werner Coninx Foundation as permanent loans. And the legacy of the superb American-Austrian artist Friedrich Kiesler (1890 – 1965), which is being presented for the first time in Switzerland, thanks to the joint efforts of the Kunst­haus Zug, the non-profit organisation Gemeinnützige Gesellschaft Zug and the Stiftung Sammlung Kamm to acquire this group of works.

The Stiftung Sammlung Kamm is also celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year, which is also the year of the 100th anniversaries of the deaths of both Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. Groups of work by these artists will be on display. The Kunsthaus Zug will also present works by the designer and artist Koloman Moser and the architect Otto Wagner, both of whom also died 100 years ago.
 

Curated by Matthias Haldemann and Marco Obrist

 

 

Kunsthaus Zug
Dorfstrasse 27
CH-6301 Zug
Tel (+41) 041 725 33 44
info@kunsthauszug.ch


Photo:
Gustav Klimt
Italienische Gartenlandschaft, 1913
Kunsthaus Zug, Stiftung Sammlung Kamm

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