World – The great 20th century stops on Lake Lugano, with Giacomo Balla and Piero Dorazio at the center of the rich agenda that the MASI – Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana has scheduled for 2023 and which will also see the master of photograph Werner Bischof, contemporary painting by the artist Rita Ackermann and a wide selection of unpublished works from the Olgiati Collection.

Giacomo Balla and Piero Dorazio compared on the thread of light
The futurist artist and the Roman revolutionary abstractionist with a “pure and independent character” will be the protagonists of the exhibition next autumn Where the lightan itinerary curated by Gabriella Belli, organized in collaboration with the Piero Dorazio archive and set up by the studio of the Swiss architect Mario Botta. From 23 September to 23 December 2023, in the spaces of the Giancarlo and Danna Olgiati Collection, the public will be drawn into an extraordinary “case” of elective affinities between two great masters of 20th-century Italian art. We are talking about Giacomo Balla – who will be present in Lugano with an important nucleus of iridescent interpenetrations from 1912, many of which on loan from the GAM of Turin – and the younger Roman painter Piero Dorazio, on display with a series of works from the series ” Reticoli”, dated from 1959 to 1963.
To suggest the theme of the comparison, giving the title to the exhibition, is the homonymous collection of poems by Giuseppe Ungaretti, illustrated by Dorazio. Light becomes the quintessence of life, but also the perennial challenge of artists who have always had to measure their expressive abilities with it.

Werner Bischof, Model with Rose, Zurich, Switzerland, 1939, Digital Reconstruction Inkjet Print, 2022 © Werner Bischof Estate / Magnum Photos

Light and color will also be at the center of the first appointment with which MASI inaugurates the 2023 season.

Photography stars at the LAC with Werner Bischof
From 12 February to 2 July Zurich photographer Werner Bischof, one of the great interpreters of 20th century photography, will speak to the public through the exhibition Unseen Colour which will explore his work in color through a selection of one hundred unpublished shots taken between 1939 and the mid-1950s.
Similar to a journey through the worlds visited and experienced by the great lens of the Magnum Photos agency, between object photography and reportage, the exhibition itinerary will cover the entire arc of his career.

At the LAC the enigmatic creations of Rita Ackermann
From Bischof’s brilliant compositions made of light and shadow to the stratified and enigmatic creations of the Hungarian painter Rita Ackermann, protagonist of the second exhibition appointment in 2023 at MASI. Scheduled at the LAC from March 12 to August 13, 2023, Hidden it will be the largest retrospective ever dedicated to the artist’s work to date, characterized by tireless research around line, shape and colour. About fifty works, including paintings and drawings made by Ackermann in the last 30 years in New York, will account for the themes explored by his early work, but also for more recent research.

Rita Ackermann, Mama, Yves’s Mask, 2021, Acrylic, oil, pigments and fat pencil on canvas | Photo: © François Fernandez © Rita Ackermann | Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth

Hedi Mertens at Palazzo Reali
Instead, the exhibition dedicated to the abstract painter Hedi Mertens will focus on Swiss concrete and constructive art, which will return to the public the work and the singular story of an artist who found the favorable conditions in Ticino to develop her art. Mertens began her career at an already advanced age, in the 1960s. Yet, in just over twenty years, you manage to quickly develop your own strong and independent artistic vocabulary, thanks also to the intense exchange with the representatives of Zurich concrete art, such as Max Bill, Camille Graeser, Verena Loewensberg, Richard Paul Lohse.
The exhibition set up at Palazzo Reali will focus on this from 2 April to 15 Octobercreated in collaboration with the Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich.

German Expressionism takes the stage at the LAC with Alexej von Jawlensky
Alexej von Jawlensky in Ascona … the three most interesting years of my life… is the title of the exhibition which, from 23 April to 1 August, revisits the years spent by the Russian artist in Ticino at the LAC. One of the founders of the Neue Künstlervereinigung München and a member of the Blaue Reiter, Alexej von Jawlensky at the outbreak of the First World War hastily left Germany to reach Ascona after having touched various places in Switzerland.
The period spent in the Ticino town was fundamental in the artistic career of the representative of German expressionism. On the shores of Lake Maggiore, in fact, his personal pictorial language was consolidated in which the bright colors and marked lines of expressionism meet the simplified forms and chromatic transparencies of abstraction.

Alexej von Jawlensky’s trail of color with wide and flat backgrounds, which in some ways recall Matisse, whose work the artist got to know during his frequent stays in Paris, guides us towards another great appointment in 2023 signed by MASI. Bally Artist Award 2023 is in fact the title of the exhibition which, from 4 to 25 June, will bring to Palazzo Reali the works of the winner of the Bally Prize, the competition organized by the Bally Foundation in collaboration with MASI, aimed at promoting the artistic and creative world of Ticino and the Swiss.

Alexej von Jawlensky, Mytischer Kopf: Mädchenkopf (halbseitlich), circa 1918, Oil and pencil on paper laid down on cardboard, Kunstmuseum Basel- Stiftung Im Obersteg, Depositum im Kunstmuseum Basel | Photo: © Martin P. Bühler

From Durer to Warhol. Masterpieces from the Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich
Instead, to admire one of the largest collections of prints and drawings in Switzerland, just reach Lugano between September 10, 2023 and January 7, 2024 when the LAC will welcome the route From Durer to Warhol. Masterpieces from the Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich. This exceptional exhibition event displays the most important nuclei of the Graphic Art Collection of the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH), exhibited together for the first time. It will be an unmissable opportunity to admire together masterpieces by artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Parmigianino, Hendrik Goltzius, Goya, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Andy Warhol.
In addition to tracing a fascinating journey through the history of art over the last six centuries, the exhibition will offer a detailed overview of the various engraving and drawing techniques perfected by artists over the centuries.

Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve, 1504, Burin engraving, Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich

An unprecedented look at the Olgiati Collection
Nairy Baghramian, Louise Bourgeois, Giorgio de Chirico, Emilio Isgrò, Arturo Martini, Giulio Paolini, Alberto Savinio are just some of the protagonists of the appointment At the studio edited by Danna Olgiati. The Giancarlo and Danna Olgiati Collection, part of the MASI museum circuit, and which has its headquarters in Lugano, will be at the center of the exhibition program from 25 March to 4 June.
Drawing inspiration from the title of the work by Ilya Kabakov, which autobiographically recounts the Ukrainian artist’s gaze on the great avant-gardes of the past, the spaces of the Giancarlo and Danna Olgiati Collection present an exhibition dedicated mainly to works, many recently acquired, in constant dialogue between present and past, where the concept of artist’s studio is expressed through multiple forms and means.

Read also:
• One hundred masterpieces for a great story: 25 years of the Fondation Beyeler