Exhibition Kunstmuseum Bern follows a friendship on the pulse of the avant-garde
Works by the Spanish painter and cubist Juan Gris are a focal point of the Rupf Collection, which is now on display at the Bern Art Museum. These include the portrait of his wife Josette Gris from 1916.
Image: Keystone
Works by Picasso also made their way from Paris to the collection of his friend Hermann Rupf in Bern through Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. For example, "Tête de jeune fille" from 1929, which is now on display at the Kunstmuseum Bern.
Image: Keystone
August Macke's "Garden Restaurant" from 1912 was confiscated from German museums as "degenerate" art and ended up in the Rupf collection at the infamous auction in Lucerne. It is now on display at the Kunstmuseum Bern.
Image: Keystone
Works by the Spanish painter and cubist Juan Gris are a focal point of the Rupf Collection, which is now on display at the Bern Art Museum. These include the portrait of his wife Josette Gris from 1916.
Image: Keystone
Works by Picasso also made their way from Paris to the collection of his friend Hermann Rupf in Bern through Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. For example, "Tête de jeune fille" from 1929, which is now on display at the Kunstmuseum Bern.
Image: Keystone
August Macke's "Garden Restaurant" from 1912 was confiscated from German museums as "degenerate" art and ended up in the Rupf collection at the infamous auction in Lucerne. It is now on display at the Kunstmuseum Bern.
Image: Keystone
In the "Kahnweiler & Rupf" exhibition, the Kunstmuseum Bern is showing important works of modern art. However, the show also sheds light on a close and long-standing friendship between two art lovers. It was this friendship that made the current exhibition possible in the first place.
20.11.2024, 10:35
SDA
The collection of Hermann Rupf, who worked as a merchant on Bern's Waisenhausplatz, began in 1907, when his good friend and art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler opened his art gallery in Paris, as the Kunstmuseum Bern wrote in its press release. Works of art from Paris found their way into the Rupf Collection, which is now housed in the Bern Museum.
The museum is now showing important works from this collection, including those by Cubism icons such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque or representatives of Fauvism such as André Derain. Or the Spanish painter Juan Gris, from whom Rupf was able to acquire 30 works of art from his friend Kahnweiler at the beginning of the First World War. This large group of works is one of the focal points of the collection, according to the art museum.
The collection will be illuminated under the auspices of the friendship between Rupf and Kahnweiler in special times. In addition to the works on display, the exhibition also includes previously unpublished correspondence between the two art lovers. They wrote to each other during the Second World War. The correspondence broke off temporarily when Kahnweiler had to go into hiding as a result of the persecution of the Jews.
How the Second World War influenced the Swiss art market is illustrated in the show by the painting "Garden Restaurant" by August Macke. The Nazi regime defamed works and artists of classical modernism as "degenerate" and confiscated them from German art galleries in order to sell them abroad. This included the "Garden Restaurant". According to the Kunstmuseum Bern, Rupf acquired it in 1939 in the post-sale of the notorious auction of "degenerate" art in Lucerne - despite reservations.
The exhibition "Kahnweiler & Rupf. A Friendship between Paris and Bern" can be seen at the Kunstmuseum Bern from November 22 to March 23 next year.
