Museum Franz Gertsch

In the spring/summer of 2025, the Franz Gertsch Museum, at the suggestion of the Cultural Commission of the Emmental Regional Conference, which has supported the museum since 2021, will present an exhibition on artistic creation from the Emmental. The exhibition will showcase artworks by Emmental artists or works related to the Emmental, primarily from the possession of the 39 municipalities that have joined the Regional Conference. The exhibition spans a wide range of well-known representatives from the 19th/20th centuries to more recent and contemporary art in mediums such as painting, watercolour, drawing, printmaking, photography, object art, sculpture, and ceramics.

Featuring works by Andreas Althaus (*1951), Hansueli Anliker (1941 – 2008), Cuno Amiet (1868 –1961), Alfred Bachmann (1880 –1964), Oliviu Beldeanu (1924 –1960), Manuel Burgener (*1978), Max Buri (1868 –1915), Henri Georges Delacour (1878 –19??), Ueli Dolder (*1951), Heinz Egger (*1937), Erika Fankhauser Schürch (*1969), Hans Gartmeier (1910 –1986), Werner Gfeller (1895 –1985), Jürg Grünig (*1939), Roland Kämpf (*1961), Sangwoo Kim (*1980), Hans Kohler (1939 – 2006), Selina Lutz (*1979), Rebecca Mäder (*1978), Willi Meister (1918 – 2012), Peter Merz (*1942), Ueli Mürner (*1953), Werner Neuhaus (1897 –1934), Hans Nussbaumer (1920 –1985), Ernst Purtschert (*1950), Aschi Rüfenacht (*1952), Jakob Siegenthaler (1884 –1969), Hans Stalder (*1957), Margrit Stalder (*1956), Fritz Steffen (*1947), and Ruth Steiner (1931 – 2022).

The opening of the exhibition features atmospheric photographs of the Emmental landscapes by Ernst Purtschert from his multimedia project “Die Emme… ein zorniger Fluss… ohne Quelle!” (The Emme… an angry river… without a source!). Painted landscape views from the Emmental, the area around Niederbipp and the Entlebuch by Ueli Dolder and Peter Merz are also displayed in this room.

In the next hall, in addition to loans from various municipalities, works from the art collection of the City of Burgdorf, which includes around 700 works, are represented in larger numbers. Chronologically, the exhibition begins with landscapes and a self-portrait each by Cuno Amiet and Max Buri. The view from the Lueg Pass, just seen in the photographs, is encountered again as a painting. As the tour progresses, visitors come across various Emmental houses from past and present and other landscapes finely drawn to generously painted. Ruth Steiner is represented with a colourful view of Burgdorf. More abstract and small-scale works by Hans Kohler, active in the field of Art Brut, and Jürg Grünig are also exhibited. A small group of works revolves around Thorberg Castle (since 1893 a correctional facility in the municipality of Krauchthal) with documentary photographs by inmate Henri Georges Delacour and a sculpture created in prison by Romanian anti-communist activist Oliviu Beldeanu. The “Denkwand” (Thinking Wall) by Heinz Egger from his Burgdorf studio, to which he pinned his sketches, thoughts, newspaper cuttings and other material, is also displayed. On a long pedestal, we show a group of contemporary ceramics by Rebecca Mäder, Sangwoo Kim, Aschi Rüfenacht and Erika Fankhauser Schürch, whose stoneware reliefs each depict one square kilometer of the Emmental.

The exhibition was curated by Anna Wesle and Catharina Vogel.

Click here for the regional conference

In the cabinet of the Museum Franz Gertsch, the German drawer and printmaker Anya Triestram (*1977), who lives in Vienna and Leipzig, showcases her current works on paper and sculptures. The floral motifs and geometric-ornamental shapes of her pastel and coloured pencil drawings and resin-coated linocuts are combined with pill bugs and canopic jars.

In the cabinet of the Museum Franz Gertsch, the German drawer and printmaker Anya Triestram showcases her current works on paper and sculptures. Various works come together here to form a journey through shapes and fragments.

The large-format, finely crafted pastels and delicate coloured pencil drawings hanging on the walls depict plants and ornaments that the artist has composed into a complete picture. They move between abstraction, geometry, and figuration. Her linocuts, coated with resin, consist of small forms that are repeatedly varied and recombined. Triestram’s picture titles, entire sentences, or names evoke multi-layered associations.

In the centre of the room stands a mythical roundel with five figures that resemble Egyptian canopic jars. The modelled and partially gilded animal heads on wooden pedestals seem to whisper stories – stories of transitions, farewells and reunions, transformations. This carousel of time could start spinning at any moment. Around the roundel on the floor are arranged casts of pill bugs, small creatures that live in the shadows and yet enrich our living space. Their tiny bodies, captured enlarged in plaster, appear like artefacts, like modern fossils, indicating the cycle of nature and transience.

Everything in the exhibition seems to seek balance, a balance in the interplay of nature and culture, of past and future. The show becomes a place that invites us to perceive the quiet connections in things – and to see yesterday with new eyes tomorrow.

Anya Triestram was born in 1977 in the district of Eichsfeld, Thuringia (Germany), where she also grew up. After studying art and German for teaching at the University of Erfurt, she studied graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig from 2002 to 2007. From 2008 to 2011, she completed her training as a master student of Annette Schröter in the painting class. Since 2015, Triestram has held the position of Senior Artist at the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Austria), with artistic and technical management for woodcut and linocut. Since the late 1990s, she has mostly exhibited in Germany and Austria. The artist lives and works in Vienna and Leipzig. The exhibition at the Museum Franz Gertsch is Triestram’s first solo exhibition in Switzerland. The show was curated by Anna Wesle in collaboration with the artist.

The exhibition catalogue is published by Modo Press, Frankfurt am Main.

To the artist's website

During this exhibition period, large-format paintings and woodcuts by Franz Gertsch can be seen at the Museum Franz Gertsch. The exhibition focuses on portraits and nature pieces.

In the first room, the four Gräser (Grasses) paintings from the 1990s are displayed, with which Gertsch resumed painting after a several-year break during which he exclusively developed his new woodcut technique. “Gräser I” (1995/96) shows a strongly enlarged section of the reed-like grass (wood brome) from his garden in Rüschegg. For “Gräser II” (1996/97), “Gräser III” (1997) and “Gräser IV” (1998/99), the artist used sections from his own first painting as templates. Gertsch pursued a conceptual approach to his own painting in this series, by reworking the first painting, enlarging it, and playing with sections and exposures.

The second room of the exhibition is dedicated to large-format portraits alongside Schwarzwasser woodcuts. The models for the portrait woodcuts on display here, “Natascha IV” (1987/88) “Dominique” (1988), “Doris” (1989), and “Silvia” (2001/02), were young women in their early 20s from Franz Gertsch’s surroundings and circle of acquaintances. In the mid-1980s, Gertsch developed his own type of large-format coloured woodcut that differed from his early ventures in this technique in several essential points. While he retained this technique’s classic black linearity in his first woodcuts and worked with a system of black contours, the later woodcuts are characterized by a system of so-called ‘light points’—the depiction of the motif results from the interaction of the print’s bright spots. As in his paintings, Franz Gertsch proceeded here from a photographic model, translating the light from a colour slide projection while working the lime wood printing block with a cutter into a system of incised dots and untreated areas. Franz Gertsch and his printing team finally printed a small edition of his woodcuts by hand on Japanese handmade paper. At the start of this phase, the artist worked on several blocks for a subject and then printed the different motif and colour blocks over each other. This can be seen in our exhibition in ‘Natascha IV’ and ‘Silvia’. In the case of other woodcuts, for example ‘Dominique’, he printed with one block and only one colour, thus reaching the final picture.

Other paintings and woodcuts by the artist are exhibited in the extension building.

The exhibition was curated by Anna Wesle.

To the artist's website

The exhibition in the Cabinet of the Museum Franz Gertsch is dedicated to Japanese shinhanga prints. This new type of woodcut from the 1920s to 1960s combines old tradition and technique with modern motifs, compositions and international themes. The show focuses on the iconic views of Switzerland created by Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950), but also features works by other shinhanga artists known for their innovative images of Japan.

During the 1920s to 1960s, a new type of woodblock print, the Shinhanga, were produced in Japan. Shinhanga (literally "new woodblock prints") were produced through a division of labour among the artist, engraver, and printer, as in the case of traditional Japanese woodblock prints. They gave new energy to the field of woodblock printing which had been under pressure by newer media, such as photography and lithography. While the techniques of producing Shinhanga were similar to those of traditional printing, there were significant new developments, through various receptions of Western art.

The publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō (1885-1962) was widely credited for creating the new type of prints and thereby saving the old tradition and technique of Japanese woodblock printing. Although his role as the saviour of the tradition is sometimes exaggerated, there is no doubt that he took it in new directions by hiring contemporary artists to make new designs based on their painted compositions, while using the old techniques of woodblock printing. These artists hired by Watanabe included famous painters such as Hashiguchi Goyō (1880-1921) and Itō Shinsui (1898-1972) for evocative images of women, Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) and Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950) for romantic landscapes, as well as dozens of other artists, some more well-known than others.

This exhibition will focus on the Shinhanga landscape prints that were created by these artists. The artists were no longer satisfied by the older landscape styles of Hokusai and Hiroshige, but wanted to take the tradition into new directions. These included new topics, new compositions, and new international themes. Hiroshi Yoshida, for example, travelled to the West in search for new topics, represented here by views of Switzerland. He also depicted the same location at different times of the day, an idea picked up from Claude Monet and the impressionists.

It is no accident that many of the buyers of Shinhanga were western collectors (as, for example, Princess Diana and Steve Jobs), as the prints give a sense of speaking to a wider world, although they often show scenes of traditional Japan. Just as Franz Gertsch came to use Japanese paper for his woodcuts, the printed art of the twentieth century, whether in Japan or in Switzerland became profoundly universal in its techniques, images, and appeal.

This exhibition combines images of Japan and Switzerland in the museum honouring Franz Gertsch, a man who also spanned the two regions. It will focus on the iconic images of Switzerland created by Yoshida and will also feature other shinhanga artists noted for their innovative images of Japan.

The exhibition is curated by Prof. Dr. Hans Bjarne Thomsen. The exhibition catalogue will be published by Modo Press, Frankfurt am Main.