Forthcoming Exhibitions and Publications in Switzerland ​
​Year Ahead 2024

Fausto Melotti. Jewelry
​Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Bahnhofstrasse
​13 December 2023 – 9 March 2024

Opening 13 December 2023 at Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Bahnhofstrasse, ‘Fausto Melotti. Jewelry’ will be the first comprehensive survey of the Italian artist’s jewelry oeuvre. Organized in collaboration with the Melotti Foundation, the exhibition will highlight his meticulously crafted jewelry from the 1960s, ‘70s and early ‘80s, featuring exceptional creations in gold, silver and brass, complemented by a focused selection of sculptures in the same materials. Admired for his unique contribution to the development of mid-century European Modernism, the versatile Italian artist, sculptor and poet worked in a variety of media. Oscillating between abstraction and figuration, Melotti developed a unique artistic language based on Renaissance principles of harmony, order, geometry, and musical structure, which is reflected in his jewelry making practice.

Melotti’s first jewelry pieces are a series of necklaces in glazed ceramic or terracotta that he made for his wife in the 1940s. From 1959, the artist turned to brass and later gold, using the malleability of the materials to create jewelry with slender lines that mirrored his sculptures of the period. These are characterized by curved and spiraling note-like forms that seem to dematerialize in space. The shapes of the jewelry pieces are derived from Melotti’s sculptures—metal grids, curls, ellipses, twisted wires, moons, circles or triangles—that have been transformed into the wearable earrings, pendants or brooches, which will be on view in Zurich.

Gerhard Richter: Engadin
​Nietzsche-Haus, Sils; Segantini Museum, St. Moritz; and Hauser & Wirth St. Moritz
​16 December 2023 – 13 April 2024

Gerhard Richter, born in 1932, is one of the most important and celebrated artists of our time. His works can be found in international collections and have been exhibited in numerous museums and galleries in Europe and the United States. Richter first vacationed in the Swiss Alpine village Sils, located in the Upper Engadin region, in 1989 and has regularly visited the location during both summer and winter holidays for over 25 years. Presented across three venues in the Upper Engadin—Nietzsche-Haus in Sils and the Segantini Museum and Hauser & Wirth in St. Moritz—‘Gerhard Richter: Engadin’ is the first exhibition to explore Richter’s deep connection with the Alpine valley landscape. More than 70 works from museums and private collections—including paintings, overpainted photographs, drawings and objects—are testament to the artist’s fascination with the Upper Engadin valley.

The work connecting the three exhibition venues is a steel sphere that Richter had produced as an edition, on view at each site. He first presented it at Nietzsche-Haus in 1992 in an exhibition curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist. Each unique sphere bears the name of a mountain in the Upper Engadin. The matte, subtly reflective, almost surreal sphere delicately reflects all that surrounds it. It symbolises the sublime yet inhospitable manifestations of nature, which are especially conspicuous in the mountains.

Cathy Josefowitz​. Release
​Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Limmatstrasse
​1 February – 17 May 2024

In her quest to represent the body as an expressive vehicle of individual experience, New York-born, Swiss-raised artist Cathy Josefowitz (1956 – 2014) created a wide-ranging oeuvre spanning drawing and painting, performance and dance. The breadth of her creative output will be on view in a solo exhibition—Josefowitz’s first in Zurich— focusing on her compelling progression of the figure across four decades, from the 1970s to her later shift towards abstraction, with many works shown for the first time. The presentation takes its title from Josefowitz’s choreographic piece ‘Release’ (1988), a performance replete with fluid movements projected on the wall of the gallery. The artist takes the feeling of liberation to a whole new meaning, finding freedom in her dance and in her paintings.

On view are Josefowitz’s oils on cardboard and gouaches on paper from the 1970s in which the artist plays with traditional depictions of the reclining nude through a female lens. Later paintings on canvas and watercolours on receipts from the early 1990s reveal a new way of working with the figure through a shift in pattern, style, colour and form. The figurative realm soon gave way to increasing abstraction, releasing the body from literal depictions. Josefowitz’s Prayers series (1998-2001) depicts prayer shawls and mats that often came to represent family members, whilst the Venus series (2004-2006) places the motif of the cloth in dialogue with tropes of womanhood from art history. In surveying the development of Josefowitz’s visual language, this exhibition attests to the artist’s enduring determination to depict the figure in both its anatomical and metaphysical dimensions.

Philip Guston
​Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Limmatstrasse
​Opening June 2024​

Philip Guston (1913 – 1980) is one of the great luminaries of 20th-century art. His commitment to producing work from genuine emotion and lived experience ensures its enduring impact. Guston’s legendary career spanned half century from 1930 to 1980. His paintings—particularly the liberated and instinctual forms of his late work—continue to exert a powerful influence on younger generations of contemporary painters. ‘Philip Guston’ at the Tate Modern is on view until 25 February 2024.

Rita Ackermann: The Ecstasy of Leaving the Exile, I-VII (2023)
​15 December 2023 – 30 March 2024
​Leonard’s, Le Grand Bellevue Gstaad

Le Grand Bellevue Gstaad presents seven new paintings by Rita Ackermann within the restaurant Leonard’s, in partnership with Hauser & Wirth. From the outset of her career Ackermann has made works in dialogue with that of other artists. The new site-specific paintings on view in Leonard’s take as a point of departure Ferdinand Hodler’s philosophy of Parallelism. The result of Ackerman’s engagement with the Swiss master is a monumental new frieze work ‘The Ecstasy of Leaving the Exile, I-VII’ (2023), on view for the first time.

This frieze, the first in Ackermann’s career, is made up of seven individual paintings featuring the adolescent girls that have appeared in her work since the early 1990s. Their organization across the seven canvases is reminiscent of patterns of movement and gesture so much a part of the artist’s past figurative and abstract paintings However, Ackermann gives this long-established form of painting an inventive new twist through reconsidering the breaks and continuities characteristic of a frieze. While the recurrent and varied figures in each of the individual paintings can be compared to the single frames of a filmstrip, the red line of paint running through all of them suggests a continuity common to a motion picture. Ackermann’s paintings invite their viewer to come along with her into a world in which another kind of logic reigns.

Press Contacts:

Maddy Martin, Hauser & Wirth Zurich/St. Moritz
​maddymartin@hauserwirth.com

Kristin Brüggemann, Hauser & Wirth Zurich/Publishers
​​
​kristinbrueggemann@hauserwirth.com

Manisha Bhogal, Hauser & Wirth Zurich
​manishabhogal@hauserwirth.com

^{Captions and courtesy}

^{Fausto Melotti
​Collana (Necklace)
​ca. 1971
​Brass
​25 x 10 cm / 9 7/8 x 3 7/8 in
​©Fondazione Fausto Melotti, Milano
​Courtesy Fondazione Fausto Melotti, Milano and Hauser & Wirth
​Photo: Sergio Anelli, Milano}

^{Portrait of Fausto Melotti © Fondazione Fausto Melotti, Milano. Courtesy Fondazione Fausto Melotti, Milano and Hauser & Wirth}

^{Gerhard Richter
​St. Moritz
​1992
​Oil on canvas
​72 x 102 cm / 28 3/8 x 40 1/8 in © Gerhard Richter 2023
​Private Collection, Switzerland}

^{Cathy Josefowitz
​D‘après I‘Olympia de Manet
​2004 - 2005
​Oil and pastel on canvas
​194 x 158.8 x 2.7 cm / 76 3/8 x 62 1/2 x 1 1/8 in
​© Estate of Cathy Josefowitz
​Courtesy Estate of Cathy Josefowitz and Hauser & Wirth
​Photo: Jon Etter}

^{Cathy Josefowitz
​Untitled
​ca. 1974
​Oil on cardboard
​96.3 x 68 cm / 37 7/8 x 26 3/4 in
​© Estate of Cathy Josefowitz
​Courtesy Estate of Cathy Josefowitz and Hauser & Wirth
​Photo: Flavio Karrer}

^{Philip Guston with ‘The Studio,’ 1969 © The Estate of Philip Guston Courtesy Hauser & Wirth
​Photo: Frank Lloyd}

^{Rita Ackermann
​Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
​Photo: Daniel Turner}

^{Rita Ackermann
​The Ecstasy of Leaving the Exile 7 Times on Repeat VII
​2023
​Oil, acrylic and China marker
​50.8 x 147.3 cm / 20 x 58 in
​© Rita Ackermann
​Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
​Photo: Sarah Muehlbauer}