The exhibition features early “symbolic” landscapes with Herri met de Bles as well as the realism of the “Golden Age” of Dutch painting and the country life of the Appenzell peasant painters. Claude Monet’s Impressionist highlight Palazzo Contarini follows Camille Corot and Gustave Courbet. In addition to Ferdinand Hodler and the Giacomettis, the Eastern Swiss artist Sebastian Oesch represents Swiss art after 1900. Modernist positions are marked by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Le Corbusier, and Ferdinand Gehr. Contemporary art is also well represented with important works by Mario Merz and Per Kirkeby as well as works by Swiss artists such as Silvie Defraoui, Patrick Rohner, and Katalin Deér.

The common thematic and technical thread that runs through the presentation is based on nature and its manifestations, thus combining very different works into new units of meaning. Insights, Outlooks is conceived as a complementary counterpart to the parallel exhibition Gazes Out of Time, which focuses on the face and the human eye. What the eye sees when it is directed not at someone else, but at things that are very close or very far away, is revealed here in a variety of subject matter, styles, and media.

Curator: Matthias Wohlgemuth