At MASI in Lugano, Gertsch's etchings in dialogue with woodcuts by Gauguin and Munch

The Museo d’arte della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano is hosting from May 12 to September 22, 2019 the exhibition Gertsch - Gauguin - Munch. Cut in wood dedicated to one of the most significant artists on the contemporary Swiss scene, Franz Gertsch (Mörigen, 1930).

The exhibition, curated by the artist himself in collaboration with museum director Tobia Bezzola, presents the public with nine of his monumental etchings placed in dialogue with a selection of more than seventy woodcuts by Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch.

Profound affinities between the three artists can be seen, especially in their mastery of woodcut technique: Gauguin’s and Munch’s woodcuts are small- to medium-format works characterized by expressive lines and strong color contrasts; Gertsch’s etchings appear as vast monochrome surfaces studded with tiny points of light.

The artist himself said, “I feel close to Gauguin and Munch in their extremely personal approach to woodcut technique. All three of us developed a very particular language in this technique. Our woodcut production is somewhat unique.”

Gauguin engraves woodblocks with any tool and also reworks them in printmaking; Munch breaks down the matrices of his works into several pieces using different colors to reassemble them later like a jigsaw puzzle and then proceeds to print a multi-color image in a single pass. Both revolutionized the canons of wood engraving, and similarly so did Gertsch, when in 1985 he decided to discontinue the production of large-format realist paintings to devote himself to the xylographic technique.

He engraves a dense pattern of dots on the matrix, determining the light points and outlining the image. Each woodcut takes about a year to make. From each matrix, the artist creates specimens of different hues with inks he prepares himself and printed on huge sheets of paper specially made by a Japanese papermaker.

Themes such as melancholy and eros, the mystical vision of landscape and nature, and the artists’ sense of loneliness and estrangement in society recur in the works of the three artists. In addition, in Gauguin’s etchings we find his famous scenes of daily life and Tahitian female figures; in Munch’s woodcuts we recognize some of his most famous paintings, such as The Kiss and Girls on the Bridge. Gertsch uses the same archive of photographic images as a starting point for his paintings and etchings.

The exhibition aims to celebrate the artistic career of one of the leading exponents of Swiss art as he approaches his 90th birthday.

For info: www.masilugano.ch

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Thursday until 8 p.m. Closed Mondays

Image: Edvard Munch, Girls on the Bridge [Pikene på broen] (1918; Woodcut and lithograph on tissue paper, 49.5 x 43 cm; Private collection) Courtesy Galleri K, Oslo. Photo: Reto Rodolfo Pedrini

At MASI in Lugano, Gertsch's etchings in dialogue with woodcuts by Gauguin and Munch

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