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For the First Time, the Exhibition Arp Gehr Matisse Places the Work of Ferdinand Gehr

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For the First Time, the Exhibition Arp Gehr Matisse Places the Work of Ferdinand Gehr 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 symbolism 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 Dada 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.
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