Manageable in size and outstanding in quality, the collection of the Kunst Museum Winterthur is considered one of the most beautiful collections of classical modernism—in Switzerland and beyond.

Opened to the public on January 2, 1916, the museum was—according to the inscription over its entrance—dedicated “to art and science.” It was an expression of the civic responsibility of the important collectors and patrons of Winterthur. In the year of the opening, French modernism made its first major appearance in Switzerland. Since then, art has developed in radical ways, and the exhibition spaces has continued to provide an ideal setting—including for contemporary art, which was given its own space in 1994 in the addition designed by Architekten Gigon/Guyer. The infrastructure—along with the wall coverings and illumination systems—is outdated; the museum will be closed for six months for urgently needed renovation work.

This enables us to reconsider the collection and present it in a focused new hanging. The great painters of modernism will continue to be represented with masterpieces: Claude Monet’s water lilies, Vincent van Gogh’s postman, Piet Mondrian’s grid compositions, and Paul Klee’s subtle dissolving of constructivist rigor in his mysterious painting Blooming. These will be accompanied in Winterthur by key works by women artists such as Alice Bailly, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Meret Oppenheim, Verena Loewensberg, and Maria Lassnig.

The presentation will still begin with Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, which lead to classical modernism, with Cubism, Surrealism, and Constructivism. Postwar modernism will be introduced by groups of work by Alberto Giacometti and Giorgio Morandi, and complemented by selected works by American postwar painters. The Winterthur collection not only reflects the developments of art; it also pays homage to the collectors Hedy and Arthur Hahnloser, Richard Bühler, Heinrich Wolfer, and Clara and Emil Friedrich-Jezler, who were dedicated to art of their respective eras.

Curated by Konrad Bitterli, Andrea Lutz, and David Schmidhauser