Agenda

Johannes Itten (1888–1967) is one of the protagonists of 20th century art history. He also teached at the Bauhaus in the 1920’s.  The exhibition shows how strongly his artistic beginnings were rooted in the city of Thun and how his experience of nature was influenced by Lake Thun and the surrounding area. Starting with his early work, the exhibition presents landscape representations up to his late work, with a series of paintings and drawings that have never been exhibited before. In the Thun landscape, Itten has developed a concept of nature that is fundamental to his art.

The last Duke of Zähringen died in 1218. This dynasty ruled for 150 years in northwest Switzerland, southwest Germany and Burgundy. They were the influential monarchs in the Holy Roman Empire.  They built numerous and castles and founded cities (a.o. Bern, Bräunlingen, Burgdorf, Freiburg (i.Br.), Freiburg i.Ü., Murten, Neuenburg am Rhein, Rheinfelden, Thun). The exhibition deals with art, legends and historical reality, castles, cities, pedigrees and other subjects in a castle also built by the Zähringen.

The exhibition (Von kopf bis Fuss) shows the fascinating visual discourse on the changes and constants in the human image today and 130 thirty years ago. Representations of people have done much more than depict their physiological features. They were also an expression of changing ideas about being human. While in earlier centuries the portrait genre, in particular, was predestined to reflect the respective human image, today the fine arts are turning increasingly to the human body as a whole. Paintings, sculptures, drawings and installations by around fifty artists sheld light from diverse angles on this development of the past 130 years.