Agenda

The Hilti Art Foundation is showing thirty-six selected paintings and sculptures in the neighbouring museum of art. The exhibition is devoted to an exploration of the female form by Lehmbruck, Hodler, Picasso, Léger, Laurens and Alberto Giacometti, paintings by artists of classical modernism (Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Beckmann, Kandinsky, Klee, Dubuffet and Wols) and paintings from 1980 to the present day.

The exhibition pays attention to the long history and culture of bathing in lake Geneva (Lac Léman). The lake knows 121 officially recognized spots of bathing nowadays, in Vevey, Lausanne, Genève, Montreux, Nyon and many other Swiss and French (Thonon et Évian les-Bains). The show tells the (ancient) story of bathing and its culture. Fashion, tourism, architecture of buildings, quality of the water, health and many other aspects are being dealt with, including the presence of famous visitors, such as Voltaire, Hergé, Courbet, Louis XVIII, Brigitte Bardot and many others.

Thousands of Swiss people were living in Russia when the revolution broke out in 1917. At the same time, Russian intellectuals, artists and socialists were also living in Switzerland, including Lenin, who was living in Geneva, Bern and Zurich. The Bolshevik revolution started actually in Switzerland, in Zurich to be more precise, from where Vladimir Iljitsj Oeljanov, better known as Lenin (1870-1924) left to St. Petersburg on 9 April 1917, to organize the violent Bolshevik take-over in October 1917. The exhibition tells the story of the ties linking the two countries at a time of upheaval and provides an overview of Russia’s political and cultural development during this period.  Arond 25 000 Swiss citizens lived in Russia these days. Fritz Platter and his wife were committed to the cause and even organized Lenins´trip from Zurich via other countries to Russia in april 1917. It didn´t help them, because both fell victim to the terror of Stalin. The exhibition was created in partnership with the German Historical Museum (Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin).