Hedi Mertens

The exhibition presents the work and life story of an artist who boasted a solid theoretical background and found favourable conditions in Ticino to apply that and develop her own practice. Hedi Mertens (San Gallo, 1893 - Carona, 1982) had a somewhat non-linear career which got off the ground at an advanced age. Yet in just over twenty years the classically-trained artist developed a personal practice worthy of note in the field of Swiss concrete art. The exhibition at MASI Lugano traces the stages in the career of this artist, who is little known to the general public, highlighting her compositional work and how she processed the theories she assimilated in intensive exchanges of ideas with the artists and intellectuals involved in the world of abstract and concrete art. This connection is traced in the show, with a number of key works by the four main exponents of Zurich concrete art: Max Bill, Camille Graeser and Verena Loewensberg as well as Richard Paul Lohse. The exhibition will be accompanied by a bilingual catalogue (Italian/German).

The show is produced in collaboration with the Haus Konstruktiv of Zurich.

The artist

Hedi Mertens studied painting in Zurich in 1912 under the painter Wilhelm Hummel, and in Munich at the school of Wilhelm Depschitz, before following courses held by the painter Stanislaus Stückglad. After initially working in an Expressionist vein, in 1960 she began developing her own geometric/concrete practice. In the early 1950s she arrived in Ticino, initially staying in Ronco dei Fiori in Solduno, where the Marguerite Arp Foundation is now located, then in Carona, until her death in 1982.