Arp Gehr Matisse 11 March – 27 August 2017

For the first time, the exhibition Arp Gehr Matisse places the work of Ferdinand Gehr (1896–1996), one of the most unusual artists of the twentieth century to work in Switzerland, in the context of the international avant-garde. His works engage in a dialogue with two central modernist artists, Hans Arp (1886–1966) and Henri Matisse (1869– 1954).

The formal and conceptual parallels are astonishing and open up a new perspective on Gehr’s compositions and use of color. The artist maintained a personal acquaintance with Hans Arp ever since the woodcut Geranien (1928) caught Arp’s attention in the early 1950s and he decided that he simply had to meet the artist. In the case of Arp as well as Gehr, an artistic position that always aims at the essence of things is the key to understanding their art. The organic shapes and symbolic integration of the human being in the cycle of nature as well as cosmological and religious contexts can be found in both artists’ work. The radiant pigment as well as the radical reduction of form in Henri Matisse’s late papiers coupés show a strong connection to the concentrated form and bright colors in Ferdinand Gehr’s work.

Finally, prints occupy an important place in the work of all three artists: Arp’s basic shapes from Elemente (1920/1950), his series Le soleil recerclé (1966), Jazz (1947), one of Matisse’s most beautiful art books, and all of Gehr’s color woodblock prints created since 1928 are featured in this exhibition.

Room 1 (Northwest Room)

The first room is dedicated to the artists’ biographies and personal relationships. An introductory selection of portrait photographs tell us more about their personalities. Ferdinand Gehr is shown in photographs by Franziska Messner-Rast (*1953) taken between 1986 and 1987 in the studio and garden of Gehr’s home at Harztannenstrasse 23 in Altstätten. The photographs exude a great deal of intimacy and capture the moment of the creation of Gehr’s works from the perspective of photography.

The photographs from the Getty Images archive show Henri Matisse in 1947 in bed cutting out shapes with scissors. A series of severe illnesses increasingly tied the French artist to his bed. Beginning in 1944 he developed his gouaches découpées, a kind of collage in which the individual forms are cut out of paper painted with gouache. This technique allowed Matisse to work with paper and scissors while lying in bed, which helped him cope with his health setbacks and continue to create art. The color photograph of Henri Matisse in his studio working on the design for Madonna and Child for the chapel in Vence (1950) was taken by Dmitri Kessel (1902–1995) for the magazine Life. The color photograph exhibited here is one of the pictures that was not included in the feature in the edition from 26 November 1951. The color photograph by Gjon Mili (1904–1984) that shows Matisse sitting in front of a drawing was taken on 31 December 1948 in Nice.

The photographs of Hans Arp are from the Erker gallery archive and were taken by Franz Larese (1927–2000) and in some cases likely also by Jürg Janett (1927–2016) or other guests of the Erker gallery. The portraits of Arp were taken by Franz Larese on a visit in Solduno in 1962 and at a signing of prints at the old Erker press in St. Gallen in August 1964. The photograph with Rudolf Hanhart, who served as conservator and director of the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen beginning in 1953, Director Witzig, Hans Arp, and an (as yet) unknown art enthusiast was taken on the same occasion. Mathilde and Ferdinand Gehr can be seen in another photograph that J. Kellenberger took at an exhibition at the Klubschule Migros in Arbon in 1956. A second photo shows Hans Arp and Director Witzig in conversation with Mathilde and Ferdinand Gehr at a joint reading in 1956 at Hans Arp’s exhibition in Schloss Arbon.

1

The display case includes contemporary books about Arp and Matisse and items from Ferdinand Gehr’s studio. Gehr also owned number 198 of the artist’s book Vers le blanc infini (1960) by Hans Arp. The traces of wear from the studio, drops of paint, and yellowed margins attest to Gehr’s frequent use of this precious artist’s book with original etchings. The exhibition catalog from the collection of Marguerite Arp-Hagenbach (Basel, 1967) was also part of Ferdinand Gehr’s studio, as was the small book about Matisse by Lothar-Günther Buchheim (Buchheim Verlag, 1952). A rasterized newspaper photo of Henri Matisse was glued to the endpaper. Ferdinand Gehr also owned the small-format color publication of the print portfolio Jazz (1947) by Henri Matisse published in 1957 by Piper.

The hand-printed work Geranien (1926) marked the beginning of the friendship between Hans Arp and Ferdinand Gehr. It was likely in 1949, during a lunch with Clara and Emil Friedrich-Jezler on the first floor of the Frauenhof restaurant in Altstätten, that Hans Arp discovered this hand-printed work by Ferdinand Gehr. Fascinated by it, he wanted to meet the artist. Typical of Arp, he visited Gehr on the same day in his studio at his home on Harztannenstrasse 23. This chance acquaintance developed into a friendship. The following year, Arp sent Gehr a personal invitation to the opening of his exhibition at Galerie Maeght in Paris on 10 November 1950. As souvenirs from a reading with Hans Arp and Ferdinand Gehr at Schloss Arbon, Marguerite Hagenbach sent two photographs from the J. Kellenberger photography studio in Arbon in a letter from 10 October 1956. Mathilde and Ferdinand Gehr also kept the wedding announcement for Marguerite Hagenbach and Hans Arp from 14 May 1959.

Room 2 (North Side Hall)

The side hall features a chronology of Hans Arp’s work between 1920 and 1965, which spanned the poles of and abstraction. Loans from the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Fondation Beyeler, the Fondazione Marguerite Arp in Locarno, the Kunstmuseum Olten, and private collections have made it possible to present a series of works of excellent quality.

After his phase, Hans Arp developed a basic artistic vocabulary and a very unique language of objects. By simplifying objects from nature, Arp arrived at the shape of the distorted oval, which became a symbol of metamorphosis and the eternal becoming, being, and disappearance of the body. Indeed, his shapes derived from the oval recall nature (birds, leaves), people (mouths, moustaches), and objects (ties, eggcups). The basic components of this amorphous style include the navel and the egg, which can be read as the quintessential symbol of conception, as in the work of Constantin Brancusi. The constellation of shapes—whether in reliefs, paintings, or drawings—often seems arranged by chance, and the (controlled) use of chance is also one of his most important and progressive creative principles.

Hans Arp’s organic, abstract style is particularly interesting when juxtaposed with Ferdinand Gehr’s work. Ferdinand Gehr made the following observation about Hans Arp’s direct influence: “He was pretty much always next to me. He helped me arrive at my own style.” Both artists symbolically integrate human beings into the cycle of nature and cosmological and religious contexts. Echoes of Hans Arp’s organic shapes can be found in Ferdinand Gehr’s simple, colorful shapes, which show no sign of shadows or spatial depth.

For the baptistery of Hermann Baur’s Allerheiligen church in Basel, in 1953 Hans Arp created a baptismal font in his own unique style. The ceiling fresco by Ferdinand Gehr was created three years later. Integrating architecture is an essential element of the work of Hans Arp as well as Ferdinand Gehr. Both artists created numerous public art projects. But unlike Arp, who mainly created sculptures and reliefs for these commissions, Gehr primarily created murals and ceiling paintings. With the technique of fresco, he was able to draw on a centuries-old tradition that reached its high point in the early Renaissance in Italy and was often used to decorate church interiors. Gehr 2 learned the fresco technique, in which the pigments are directly applied to the still moist plaster, in 1922 and 1923 during a stay in Florence.

Room 3 (Northeast Room)

In 1923 and 1924, Ferdinand Gehr lived in Paris and visited the Académie Lhote founded by André Lhote (1885–1962) in Montparnasse in 1922. His engagement with Cézanne, Matisse, Braque, and Picasso is visible, as is his interest in abstract painting. His stay in France laid the foundation for his future work: “French modern art provided me with crucial impressions. Afterward I tried to find my own path in painting.”

In 1924 Gehr moved into his new studio in Niederglatt, where he dealt intensively with the works of Rainer Maria Rilke, Paul Claudel, Hugo Ball, and Theresia von Avila. Gehr used his time studying in Germany in the late 1920s to engage in depth with German Expressionism. His search for an independent form of expression resulted in a singular series of small-scale frescoes between 1935 and 1937 (Aufnahme Mariä in den Himmel, Adam, Dämonenfries, Eros I, among others).

Gehr designed the Dämonenfries (1937) in 1935 for the stained glass window in the baptistery in St. Gallen-Bruggen. He dedicated it to his friend the demonologist Hugo Ball, who had died ten years before. His work Die Flucht aus der Zeit provided Gehr with the conceptual basis for the frieze. The fact that the artist showed the evil and demonic in symbols of human weaknesses caused a sensation. After all, Gehr did not withhold negative aspects; he was convinced that he could only do justice to religious painting when he also incorporated shortcomings and contrary, difficult aspects of belief. Due to his progressive art, Gehr was long rejected by conservative religious groups. At the same time, the “church painter” only received attention from a small section of the art world. Only after the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen presented a solo exhibition of his work in 1956 did art historians begin to see the artist in a new light.

Room 4 (Skylight Hall)

The presentation in the Skylight Hall shows the development of landscapes in Ferdinand Gehr’s work in dialogue with works by Hans Arp. The abstract shapes in Gehr’s paintings combine with Hans Arp’s abstract style. Along one wall, a chronological sequence of works demonstrate Ferdinand Gehr’s development in landscape painting. Attention to nature is a central element of his oeuvre, as is his interest in bodies and figures, which is the focus of the opposite wall. The portrayal of an external reality in the landscapes is juxtaposed with the condensed abstract representation of an inner reality, a religious experience and thinking. Gehr’s paintings thus engage in a twofold dialogue with the sculptures by Hans Arp arranged in the middle of the room on a pedestal. In particular, here the morphological similarities between both artists’ abstract works become apparent.

The presentation chosen for the Skylight Hall also offers an opportunity to discern the symbolic component that is always central to Gehr’s oeuvre in the selected works. Ferdinand Gehr always strove to find the graphic quality of a synthesis of form and to lend it a symbolic meaning. Thus, his work is characteristic of the search for the essence of form in modernism and is simultaneously based on a unique, deep level of meaning.

Room 5 (Southeast Room)

This room is dedicated to the crucial relationship between Matisse and Gehr, both of whom fought for a formal freedom in complicated methods, to intellectually penetrate abstract topics in harmony with nature and to make them visible to the viewer. 3

The primary regard in which Matisse influenced Gehr is apparent from the freedom with which he makes artistic use of form and color. This aspect runs through Gehr’s long and productive career as a kind of joie de vivre. The Cubist landscape by Henri Matisse at the entrance to the room signifies the balance between the representational observation of landscape and an abstract formal language based on late . This interaction is also significant in Ferdinand Gehr’s increasingly abstract landscapes. In particular, it deals with the relationship between form and landscape. It is a playful use of figurative shapes that increasingly approach abstraction. While Matisse always played with figurative shapes, Gehr took more radical steps toward abstraction. For instance, the painting with a yellow shape on a white background, whose precise background is not yet understood, is fully abstract.

Every exhibition needs a surprise. The close similarities to the work of Sophie Taeuber-Arp (1889–1943) result on the one hand from her collaboration with Hans Arp. A direct comparison of the untitled, abstract work by Ferdinand Gehr and Sophie Taeuber-Arp’s Gelbe Form makes the formal and intellectual similarities particularly visible. For this key work by the pioneer of Constructivist and , Hans Arp created a contrasting green frame. In reliefs and paintings, she worked with independent geometric shapes, and in particular with the compositional element of the circle. She developed geometric arrangements in which she examined the expression of simple forms and the effect of color.

The directness of the gesture, which is also conveyed in the fresco technique, shows another similarity between Gehr and Matisse. In 1974 Ferdinand Gehr realized one of his internationally most famous works in the Trier cathedral. Alpha und Omega are two frescos that were painted in two window niches of the western wall as part of a renovation of the cathedral. The comparison between the finished fresco and the sketch shows that Gehr made crucial changes while executing the work. In the final work, the figure of Mary, shown in the sketch standing on a green surface, is nestled against the shape of the architecture and accompanied by five figures. The central Christ child, still readable as a figure in the sketch, becomes radically abstract in the fresco.

Ferdinand Gehr also owned the small-format reproduction of the print portfolio Jazz (1947) by Henri Matisse published in 1957 by Piper. A folded book edition of the portfolio is held at the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Kunstmuseum Basel, and a large-format portfolio belongs to Galerie Kornfeld in Bern, parts of which are displayed in the cases here. (In order to preserve the works, the lighting in this room has been reduced to 48 lux. The first half of the exhibition features print III, Icare [Icarus], and beginning on 9 May print XII, La Nageuse dans l’aquarium [The Swimmer in the Aquarium], will be on view.)

In the handwritten text on Jazz, Matisse wrote: “In art, truth and reality begin when one no longer understands what one is doing or what one knows, and when there remains an energy that is all the stronger for being constrained, controlled and compressed. One must therefore offer oneself up in all purity and innocence, almost devoid of memory, like a communicant going to communion. It seems that we must learn to leave our experiences behind and at the same time retain the freshness of instincts.”

Room 6 (South Side Hall)

Ferdinand Gehr created his first hand-printed works early on. Along with the flower woodblock print Geranien (1928), he created announcements for engagements, weddings, and births: “purpose-bound” notes from the artist’s life in postcard size, as he called them. “If I wanted to connect with my environment, this was my way of doing that.” Soon Gehr began using the medium not only as a form of sending messages, but as an independent artistic medium. The works grew in size, and the printing became more polished. He chose a process common in Japan and China that uses water. Instead of printing overlapping colors, Gehr placed monochrome fields next to one another, often only separated by narrow, white blank spaces. Usually he worked with just a single woodblock that contained the entire composition. He colored the block with watercolors and then laid moist Japan paper on it. To protect it from the printing process, he covered this with a layer of wrapping paper. Then Gehr pressed the page to 4 the wood with a bone folder. Since the prints were made by hand, they differed in color as well as intensity. The result was series of works that were each an original in their own right. The ink has a free and lively appearance. “The woodblock print that I have decided to make should always express something clear and specific from my inner being,” said Ferdinand Gehr. At the same time, the woodblock print was connected to Gehr’s monumental paintings and public commissions, since the artist used prints to explore the themes of these works. A parallel to monumental painting can be discerned in the restraint of the formal design and the simple shapes of the woodblock print. Not least, the extensive prints offer a vivid demonstration of the artist’s development and the richness of his bright colors. These works were also based on deep reflection. “I believe I must say that both in the religious area and toward nature and people, one must have a kind of faith.” (Ferdinand Gehr)

Room 7 (Collection)

One of the most important late sculptures by Hans Arp serves as a connecting element between Ferdinand Gehr and the beginning of the exhibition. Femme paysage (1962), made of white marble, is the ideal image of the artist’s sculptural formulation, which combines natural and artificial forms. The work is normally displayed at the Kongresshaus Biel, and was acquired as a public art project for the foyer in 1966. The building complex with a high- rise and an indoor swimming pool by Max Schlup (1917–2013) is one of the most important modernist buildings in Switzerland. Therefore, it is a great privilege to be able to borrow this sculpture for the exhibition in St. Gallen. The work was produced in 1962 by Bozart for an exhibition in Brussels, and was previously shown at the Swiss Sculpture Exhibition, where it was acquired by of Biel.

The new building for the University of St. Gallen (Hochschule für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, 1963) designed by Walter M. Förderer (1928–2006) and Rolf G. Otto (1924–2003) was also decorated with an important bronze sculpture by Hans Arp at the main entrance. Schalenbaum (1960), with its vegetative growth, stands on a cement pedestal in front of the fountain in the main entrance area, where it engages in a close dialogue with the architecture.

Kongresshaus Biel Foyer, Kongresshaus Biel University of St. Gallen

5