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AT ART BASEL 2018 AT ART BASEL 2018 Dear Friends, painting by Eva Hesse that proved to be a gateway into her sculpture As we head towards the major practice. European moment in the art world calendar, we are excited to share We are proud of our strong presence with you some highlights we are in Unlimited and Parcours this bringing to Art Basel. year, and encourage you to explore and enjoy sculptures and installations We are thrilled to introduce a number by Dan Graham, Pierre Huyghe, of artists new to the Hauser & Wirth Rashid Johnson, Guillermo Kuitca, program through our participation and Lygia Pape. at the fair, including an extraordinary lamp work by Polish artist Alina Ahead of the fair we welcome you to Szapocznikow, a recent painting join us for two exceptional exhibi- by Zeng Fanzhi, and a hanging tions at Hauser & Wirth Zürich: a Jean sculpture by Georges Vantongerloo, Dubuffet solo ex hibition that explores a founding member of De Stijl. These his relationship with the urban envi- are positioned against premiere ronment, and a presentation of works sourced from the most eminent new drawings and an installation by private collections worldwide and Roni Horn. directly from our artists and estates, including phenomenal paintings Best wishes, by Philip Guston, fabric works by Marc, Iwan & Manuela Louise Bourgeois, and a seminal Alina Szapocz- nikow Lampe ‘Despite everything, I persist in trying to fix in resin the traces of our body: I am convinced that of all the mani­ fes tations of the ephemeral, the human body is the most vulnerable, the only source of all joy, all suffering and all truth […]’ — Alina Szapocznikow Elena Filipovic, Joanna Mytkowska, Alina Szapocznikow. Sculpture Undone, 1955 – 1972, New York NY: The Museum of Modern Art; Brussels / BE: Mercatorfonds, 2011, p. 28 Lampe ca. 1967, Colored polyester resin, light bulb, electrical wiring, 71.5 × 30 × 23.5 cm / 28 1/8 × 11 13/16 × 9 1/4 in ‘The endless multiplication possible through casting would lead Szapocznikow to reimagine sculpture (as well as the body) in other, more utilitarian ways. For instance, she made dozens of fully functional lamps … from a polyester resin cast of her mouth (a few including lips and breasts or breasts alone) with an integrated light bulb and held aloft by an elongated stem. … What could be a more subversive end for sculpture than to refuse to allow it to sit quietly as an unambiguous and auratic art object? Instead these objects announce unabashedly an approach to sculpture straddling the quotidian and the uncanny, at once useful and unsettling.’ Elena Filipovic, ‘Photosculptural: Alina Szapocznikow’s Index of the Body’ in Elena Filipovic, Joanna Mytkowska, Alina Szapocznikow. Sculpture Undone, 1955 – 1972, New York NY: The Museum of Modern Art; Brussels / BE: Mercatorfonds, 2011, p. 71 Georges Vanton- gerloo Des Masses dans l’univers (Masses in the Universe) Des Masses dans l’univers (Masses in the Universe) 1946, Painted wood and nickel silver, 160 × 87.4 × 79.5 cm / 63 × 34 3/8 × 31 1/4 in GEORGES VANTONGERLOO GEORGES VANTONGERLOO quite meaningful for the artist, who declared: ‘From 1938 to 1946, I have increasingly freed myself from labels. I am thus free … Art expresses itself in freedom.’ 04 Yet, Vantongerloo’s artistic origins were colored by rela- tive rigidity: he was a founding member of De Stijl, or Neo-Plasticism, in 1917 alongside artists like Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondrian. De Stijl sought a break with the past and presented a rigorous utopian aesthetic characterized by straight-line geometry, pure primary colors, and positive and negative elements, all in harmonious balance. While Des Masses dans l’univers was certainly made in conversation with De Stijl, it is a testament to Vantongerloo’s deviance from the movement, particularly as he matured artistically. In 1937, the artist made a state- ment by introducing curves and spirals into his paintings, putting De Stijl’s visually economic approach, with its emphasis on the rectilinear, in conversation with the seemingly antithetical exuberance and excess of Art Nouveau. This distinctive stylistic shift permitted Vantongerloo to work in a more free-form fashion and laid important groundwork for ‘I have no scientific knowledge. the dynamic, radical loops of Des Masses dans l’univers. 01 Only my wonder stimulates my Guy Brett (ed.), Georges Vantongerloo: A Longing for Infinity, Madrid / ES: Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2010, p. 30 01 02 curiosity.’ — Georges Vantongerloo Guy Brett, Exhibition brochure for Georges Vantongerloo. A Longing for Infinity, Madrid / ES: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2009 03 George Vantongerloo, ‘An Intimate Biography’, 1961, in Georges Vantongerloo, Georges Vantongerloo’s Des Masses dans l’univers (Masses in the Uni­ Brussels / BE: Ministry of Flemish Culture, 1980, p. 54 verse) (1946) grapples with an inquiry central to the artist’s late work: 04 ‘how can a delineated object suggest the limitless?’ 02 The sizable sus- Georges Vantongerloo quoted in Cornelia H. Butler, M. Catherine de Zegher (eds.), On Line. Drawing Through the Twentieth Century, pended sculpture comprises filamentary loops of a lemniscate – the New York NY: The Museum of Modern Art, 2010, p. 57 symbol for infinity – that lyrically link several clusters of lines and dots evoking orreries. Slim twists and coils of nickel silver chart the imag- ined path of hovering wooden planets, orbs that the artist painted in bold hues of red, blue, green and yellow. Des Masses dans l’univers ges- tures in both title and form toward the forces of the cosmos, physics, and the infinite. Impossible to pin down, it is at once sweeping yet restrained, rational yet romantic, and free-form yet geometric. With its delicate balance of volumes, colors and planes, Vantongerloo’s floating universe takes mathematical principles to spiritual heights, manifesting the artist’s lifelong desire to ‘render visible the beauty of space’ through a dedication to mathematics, abstraction, and the natural world. ‘All creation undergoes a perpetual transformation,’ said Vantongerloo. ‘The riddle of creation presents us with a spectacle of beauty which moves us and expresses itself in ‘art’ from ‘nature’.’ 03 When he created Des Masses dans l’univers, Vantongerloo had just taken an eight-year hiatus from sculpture, instead focusing on two-dimensional work. Returning to three dimensions in the mid-1940s, he worked with iron, nickel, and silver, using ribbons of these materials to explore the concept of the infinite. This period of development was Left: László Moholy- Nagy, Untitled, Dessau, 1925, Printing date: ca. 1925 – 1929 Right: Georges Vanton gerloo, Des Masses dans l’univers (Masses in the Universe), 1946 László Moholy- Nagy Untitled, Dessau, 1925 Untitled, Dessau, 1925 Printing date: ca. 1925 – 1929, Vintage gelatin silver print of photogram, 17.3 × 23.4 cm / 6 3/4 × 9 1/4 in LÁSZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY László Moholy-Nagy was one of the great artistic innovators of the twentieth century. In particular, his work as a teacher at the Bauhaus school of art in Weimar and Dessau from 1923 to 1928 was enormously influential. His approach during this time – most notably his embrace of new technologies and modern materials, and a correlated optimism about the future of design and society – came to define the Bauhaus ethos. Alongside Man Ray, Moholy-Nagy elevated the photogram to a fine art form, exploring the medium’s formal possibilities from 1922 through 1943. (Earlier experimentation with this camera-less photo- graphic process exists, as seen in the work of nineteenth century Brit- ish botanist Anna Atkins.) To make a photogram, Moholy-Nagy placed objects on photosensitive paper, which he then exposed to light. This process created negative shadows: ghostly traces of the objects atop the paper. Through this process, he explored the possibilities of mo- tion and light, creating abstract and often blurred works with a Con- structivist flavor. The artist said:‘The tools used for this photogram are no longer recognizable. The effect is achieved solely through the organiza­ tion of the light and the contrasting effects, through reflective and light­ab­ sorbing surfaces. That is the true objective and the purity of a cameraless photography; to achieve a striking effect with photographic means alone.’01 Moholy-Nagy’s Untitled, Dessau, 1925 (printed ca. 1925 – 1929) is a vintage silver gelatin print of one of his photograms. Moholy-Nagy frequently used the photogram as a leaping-off point for further ar- tistic creation. He would photograph the photogram, as seen in Unti­ tled, Dessau, 1925, or create positive contact copies. While the original photogram for Untitled, Dessau, 1925 has been lost, the image is well known. It has been published frequently, and positive copies of this photogram, as well as vintage silver gelatin prints, can be found in ma- jor institutions including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Untitled, Dessau, 1925 is also notable for its inter- esting provenance. The work initially went to Sibyl Moholy-Nagy after her husband’s death. But Helmut Franke, a commercial photo printer interested in Moholy-Nagy’s work, reached out to Sybil and ingratiat- ed himself to her in the years following Moholy-Nagy’s death. In 1949, Sybil gifted him two large boxes with various photos, photograms, paintings, negatives, and other archival material. In the 1990s Franke sold the bulk of his Moholy-Nagy holdings to the Centre Georges Pom- pidou in Paris and the Folkwang Museum in Essen, which accounts for those institutions’ nearly unparalleled collections of Moholy-Nagy’s work. Sibyl bought back three works, and would ultimately receive the unsold remainder shortly before Franke’s death.

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