The Kirchner Museum Davos collects, preserves, researches and communicates the work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The collection of the Kirchner Museum Davos encompasses all of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's creative periods from 1904 to 1938, as well as selected works by the Brücke artists and other representatives of classical modernism.
The Kirchner Museum Davos is a cultural beacon in Switzerland. It is a place of contemplation, regeneration and discussion. The Kirchner Museum Davos is a cosmopolitan, service-oriented and family-friendly museum that appeals to all ages and social groups.
Theater of Survival. Martin Disler - The late years
Martin Disler, born in Seewen/CH in 1949, was a draughtsman, painter, sculptor, poet and self-taught artist. He lived as a restless traveler in Zurich, Amsterdam, Lugano, Samedan, Milan and finally in Les Planchettes in the Swiss Jura. Martin Disler died of a stroke at the age of just 47.
The exhibition at the Kirchner Museum presents the last ten years of Martin Disler's creative life in an exciting dialog with works and writings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner from the collection of the Kirchner Museum Davos as well as from Swiss private and public collections.
Connections between the various means of expression and genres are explored in depth in the works of both Martin Disler and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The significance of the body and its role in the creative act, body language, dance, movement, gesture, expression, abstraction and figuration are interpreted and thematized.
In addition to painting, printmaking and drawing, sculpture will play a central role. Sculptures by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner from various stylistic periods will be juxtaposed with a selection of human-sized bronze sculptures by Martin Disler from the work group "Häutung und Tanz", which was realized in an intensive creative process in the years 1990-91 and exhibited in the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, Kunsthalle Basel, the Kunstforum of the Städtische Galerie im Lehmbachhaus in Munich, the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum in Duisburg, Castel Grande in Bellinzona in 1994 and the Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden in 2019, present the theme of the human figure in a scenographic and classical manner.
Disler's sculptures are materializations of a way of thinking about the body. They depict the human being in his fragility and vulnerability, a representation of the human soul that can be traced in the wooden figures and paintings of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and understood as a timeless "theater of survival".
until November 7, 2021
Europe on a cure. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Thomas Mann and the myth of Davos
For more than 150 years, Davos has been a symbolic place, a crystallization point of European cultural history and political developments. Nowhere else are the hopes and aspirations, the fears and threats of the late 19th and early 20th centuries condensed in comparable form. The omnipresence of health risks created a sense of permanent crisis, then as now. At the same time, medical and technological progress nurtured the desire for a long, healthy life. The high mountain air promised a cure for the infectious disease tuberculosis, which was killing tens of thousands of people every year. Davos recognized its opportunity and, from 1870, quickly transformed itself from a remote mountain village into an internationally renowned respiratory health resort.
At the same time, the new potential of sport was recognized and the image of a winter sports destination, which is still valid today, was systematically built up. Davos succeeded time and again in reinventing itself. Davos was a meeting place for famous people: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Katia and Thomas Mann, Arthur Conan Doyle, but also Robert Louis Stevenson, Albert Einstein and Sonja Henie, the most successful figure skater of all time. The exhibition tells their stories - both the tragic and the successful ones. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner turned his back on the metropolis of Berlin to stay in Davos forever. His paintings celebrate the Alpine world as a paradisiacal place of peaceful coexistence. Thomas Mann's novel The Magic Mountain sees Davos as a symbol for the dreams and disasters of Europe.
This is the first time that Davos has been the subject of such an extensive exhibition. The place exemplifies the complexity and disruption of modernity and makes European cultural history visible. The exhibition draws connections between medical and spa history, architecture, winter sports, art and literature, philosophy and politics. All focal points and individual aspects are explored in greater depth and expanded upon in a richly illustrated catalog.
The masterpieces by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner on display in the exhibition open up a new perspective on European cultural life at the turn of the century. Other items on loan, some of which are being exhibited for the first time, come from the Davos Museum of Local History and Sport, the Davos Medical History Collection and the Davos Documentation Library. The original diaries, notes and photographs from the Thomas Mann Archive at ETH Zurich impressively document the history of Thomas Mann's novel "The Magic Mountain".
November 28, 2021 to October 30, 2022
