Stimmung und Beobachtung — Kunst imTessin 1850-1950

The collections of the MASI Lugano reflect the very special history of visual art in Ticino. Since the end of the 19th century, this history has been shaped not only by regional artists, but also by international artists, collectors, art dealers and art scholars who have found their adopted home in Ticino.

The collections particularly reflect the special nature of the Canton of Ticino with its Italian cultural identity on the one hand and its political affiliation with the Swiss federal state on the other.

The presentation of the collection, enriched by a number of high-calibre loans, intends to convey a picture of how art in Ticino moved and developed dynamically in its unique cultural field of tension from the years after the founding of the Swiss federal state until the end of the Second World War, and which influences from the South and from the North asserted themselves here. The exhibition follows the historical traces of late Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, to Symbolism, Expressionism, New Objectivity and Magic Realism, right up to the first blossoms of Surrealism.

Artists

Cuno Amiet /Pietro Anastasio / Albert Anker / Edoardo Berta / Umberto Boccioni / Filippo Boldini / Costante Borsari /Eugène Boudin/ Alexandre Calame / Paul Camenisch / Carlo Carrà / Gustave Eugène Castan / Luigi Chialiva / Adolf Dietrich/ Leonardo Dudreville / Conrad Felixmüller / Leonor Fini / Filippo Franzoni / Achille Funi / Augusto Giacometti / Giovanni Giacometti / Ferdinand Hodler / Karl Hofer / Moïse Kisling / Emilio Longoni / Henri Matisse / Francesco Messina / Claude Monet / Luigi Monteverde / Otto Morach / Albert Müller / Cherubino Patà / Camille Pissarro / Gaetano Previati / Anita Rée / Hans Richter / Christian Rohlfs / Luigi Rossi / Henri Rousseau / Alberto Salvioni / Hermann Scherer / Wilhelm Schmid / Richard Seewald / Mario Sironi / Adolf Stäbli / Niklaus Stoecklin / Félix Vallotton / Marianne von Werefkin / Robert Zünd

Thomas Huber (*1955)

The display of the MASI’s collections, dedicated to a tradition of more than 180 years and characteristic of Cantone Ticino, is here enriched by the painting of the Zurich artist Thomas Huber, a new acquisition and the only contemporary artwork in this show.

The artwork titled 8.02.2021 is a view of Lake Maggiore and in the distance there is the Monte Rosa mountain permanently covered in snow. At first glance, the landscape seems recognizable, however, after a careful look it is possible to see that Huber re-created on canvas a mixture of diverse perspectives of the riversides. Even the shadows on the water surface do not correspond to a specific time in the day but are a mixture of morning light and afternoon shadows. These elements, that are at the same time realistic and impossible, make this work allusive and also in a way metaphysic, recognizable but alienating, becoming part of that Ticinese tradition of landscape that lives on today.