Press orientation on the exhibition

Thursday, 26 February 2026, 11 a.m. (please register) or individual guided tours upon request.

Kunst Museum Winterthur | Reinhart am Stadtgarten
Stadthausstrasse 6
8400 Winterthur

The Kunst Museum Winterthur presents Simon Starling in dialogue with works by Adolph Menzel, Caspar Wolf and other artists from the Oskar Reinhart Foundation. The exhibition shows how Starling transforms historical imagery into contemporary reflections on the city, nature and change.

Born in Epsom (UK) in 1967, Simon Starling has devoted his artistic work for years to topics such as sustainability, ecology and economics, repeatedly turning his attention to masterpieces of art and cultural history: Fiat and Piaggio as well as Tiepolo and Adolph Menzel.

In 1847/1848 the painter Adolph Menzel lived at Ritterstrasse 43 in Berlin. He immortalised the view from the window onto the backyard in a small-format oil sketch: Berlin Tenements in the Snow (1847/1848). The most important representative of German realism reveals himself here as a master of proto-impressionist painting, capturing the unspectacular view in the moment—its mundaneness captured in its spectacular painterly fashion.

Today, the view of the courtyard at Ritterstrasse 43 is obstructed by an apartment building with box-shaped balconies. Simon Starling used a complex 3D printing process to transform Menzel’s small-format painting, including its frame, into a monumental installation and reinserted it into the view as it appears today. The work becomes a dialogue between historical and contemporary image genres, an artistic reflection on the changes in urban space, and something of a memento: While Starling was working on the Menzel project, the pandemic was raging. Public life came to a standstill, exhibitions were postponed, people had to stay at home. Menzel’s view from the window took on an unexpected relevance. “The pandemic suddenly brought about this heightened sensitivity to nature. […] You had the feeling that you could observe spring in a much more contemplative way than you normally do,“ said the artist, who, with Ritterstrasse 43, addresses ”how we make images of nature and how that has changed.”

In recent years the work of Simon Starling, who now lives in Copenhagen, has been exhibited in museums around the world. The exhibition at the Kunst Museum Winterthur presents selected groups of works by the artist in dialogue with paintings from the Oskar Reinhart Collection—from Menzel to Starling, so to speak.