Born in Switzerland in 1961, Henry Leutwyler is a self-taught photographer. After being rejected by one of Switzerland’s leading photography schools, he opened his own photo studio in Lausanne, photographing cheese, chocolates and watches. In 1985, he moved to Paris...
Together, Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset make up the art duo Elmgreen & Dragset, whose show Landscapes has just opened at Pace Gallery, Geneva. In their artistic practice, they pursue questions of identity and belonging and investigate social, cultural, and...
In July 2023, Ramsay Fairs announced the appointment of Lee Cavaliere as Artistic Director of VOLTA art fair. Cavaliere is an arts professional with experience in both the institutional and gallery sectors. After working with the Tate Collection’s displays, Cavaliere...
William Monk’s Long Museum show from January 13 to March 24, 2024, was his first solo museum exhibition in Asia. It featured nineteen pieces created over four years, from 2019 to 2023, with the title: Psychopomp. This title refers to the guide of the souls; the angels...
Melinda Infante was born in 1994, and lives and works in Geneva, Switzerland. Trained in the medical field, she is an artist focused on recreating the intricate processes of the body, often working on material at a detailed, cellular level. Infante explores various...
In art, there are no borders.” This very relevant quote from Victor Hugo serves as the key to opening the doors to the collaborative exhibition Transformative Boundaries between Fabienne Levy of the eponymous gallery and Monique Deul, founder of Taste Contemporary. In...
Two months before the opening of artgenève 2024, Art Vista contributor Sonia Jebsen caught up with the new director of the fair, Charlotte Diwan, to ask her about the direction of the fair, the "salon d'art" or "living room" concept, and new VIP offerings. Sonia...
Nacoca Ko’s work at the L’effet Ferdinand exhibition at Espace L in Geneva represents a counterpoint to the other pieces on display. Through her digital pieces and performances, Ko brings a feminine perspective that responds to work by Fernando de la Rocque and...
Paintings by Chloe West are on display in At Your Altar at Galerie Mighela Shama. West is an American artist born in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1993, now living and working in St. Louis, Missouri. West is continually inspired by European art from the Medieval and...
Emmanuel Radnitsky known as Man Ray Fleeing the pogroms of Imperial Russia, Emmanuel Radnitsky's parents landed in the United States and settled in Philadelphia, his hometown. Is the Anglo-Saxon surname they choose, Ray, a sign of destiny for their eldest son? Ray of...
In anticipation of Loie Hollowell’s first exhibition in Switzerland at Pace Gallery, Geneva, Art Vista Magazine spoke to Hollowell about her upcoming show, as well as her expanding color palette, Transcendentalist art, kaleidoscopic experiences, the microcosm and the...
The contemporary African art market is booming. According to Pavillon 54, 2022 saw a record number of works by African artists sold at auction (more than 2,700), almost twice as many as before the Covid pandemic. Last year, works by Contemporary artists born in Africa...
The space of Opera Gallery located at 19 Place Longemalle, Geneva, is bathed in an atmosphere of contemplation emanating from the eighteen new paintings by Swiss artist Andy Denzler. In the series The Drift, created especially for the gallery, the public is confronted...
It was a scorching week at Art Basel this year in terms of temperature and art. The coolest hangout was on the bank of the Rhine River in front of Grand Hotel Les Trois Rois. Apart from swimming in the river, there was the main fair, Liste Art Fair, Volta Basel, Photo...
Alice Quaresma, Old Romance, 2023. Photograph printed on cotton paper with acrylic paint. 50 x 45 cm. Kristen Knupp: As the week of art in Basel opens, what work will you be exhibiting with Sobering Gallery at the Volta Fair? Alice Quaresma: The work I am showing at...
Petrit Halilaj's Unfinished Histories, Very Volcanic over this Green Feather at the Musée International de la Croix-rouge is part of the museum's year-long focus on mental health. First created in collaboration with the Tate St Ives in 2021, the piece comprises 53...
The luxury company Bally has found what it's looking for by moving into the sumptuous Villa Heleneum in Lugano, in the Swiss Canton of Ticino, whose doors opened on April 20, 2023. Founded in 1851 by Carl Frantz and Fritz Bally in Schönenwerd, Switzerland, the iconic...
Salomé Monpetit, founder of the Matchwithart concept, has been delighting us visually with her Instagram posts since 2018. Passionate about fashion, she takes on the aesthetic challenge of harmonizing her clothes with works of art. Beyond the playful aspect, her...
The Ugo Rondinone takeover or "carte blanche” of the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Geneva marks a turning point for the museum. Established in 1910, the MAH is a repository of disparate collections that have been gathered over its 113 years of existence. It holds...
Following this artistic multimedia immersion in Lausanne, we plunged back into the intimate and very detailed biography written by Rauda Jamis in 1985, Frida Kahlo: Self-portrait of a Woman. Frida Kahlo would have preferred to have been born on July 6, 1910, the year...
Kristen Knupp of Art Vista Magazine met with Leo Villareal at Pace Gallery, Geneva, on the eve of the opening of his show Nebulae and during the week of artgenève, which will feature a special presentation of a work by Villareal, Optical Machine 1. Leo Villareal is an...
Born in 1972, Nicolas Boyer was educated at Sciences Po Paris and HEC before he trained as a photographer and cameraman at the École des Gobelins. Photoreporter between 2003 and 2005 for the French and international press ( Libération, Le Nouvel Obs, Paris-Match,...
In the Barbier-Mueller family, collecting is second nature. Two generations have created a museum in Geneva that houses the largest private collection of tribal and antique objects from countries including Africa, Oceania, Asia, and the Americas. Nowadays, the heirs...
You may think that the NFT wave might be receding due to the recent volatility of cryptocurrencies in the headlines, however, the rise of artworld NFTs since the sale of Beeple's digital artwork at Christie's for $69 million in March 2021, is undeniable. Digital art...
Charlotte Hopkins Hall was interviewed by Kristen Knupp of Art Vista Magazine on October 6, 2022, at the vernissage of her exhibition in Geneva. Kristen Knupp: Could you tell me a little about your background? Charlotte Hopkins Hall: I was born in Geneva and grew up...
The Grand Rue is host to the artistic collaboration of Ai Weiwei and Joana Vasconcelos at Gowen Contemporary. This exhibition, part of "Melting Pot", the theme of the International Academy of Ceramics 70th-anniversary celebration, as well as its 50th congress, is part...
Matthieu Gafsou, a Lausanne native born in 1981, did not start learning about photography when he was very young, however, his university studies in philosophy, literature, and cinema were evidence of his interest in and concern for our world. With an intellectual and...
This review first appeared in Philosophical Practice, Volume 17.2, July 2022, and is republished by permission of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association. https://appa.edu The works of German-Egyptian sculptor Dr. Gindi, who launched her...
With its first-ever Cultural Spotlight Pavilion, VOLTA Basel sets the focus on Saudi-based artists: ATHR Foundation presents works by twelve independent emerging artists in a fair pavilion measuring 70 square meters. Complementing the fair’s international lineup of...
The Geneva exhibition of the 6th edition of the IWPA Award will be at WRP Foundation. After exhibitions in Paris, Dubai, Tokyo, and Almeria, IWPA presents the best female talents of the IWPA Award 2022 at the WRP Foundation, Geneva. The exhibition presents the...
A nomadic artist Rebecca Brodskis (1988) grew up in contact with her painter-grandmother living in Morocco. Her father, Lu, surrounded himself with artists. At 18, she began studying at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, then at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design...
Kristen Knupp, Art Vista Magazine: VOLTA has a new location for the New York fair, at the former Dia building and Hauser & Wirth gallery space in Chelsea. What excites you about this new location, and about the VOLTA Art Fair New York in general? Kamiar Maleki,...
Rejoicing in the renewal of springtime, I am always enthralled with the tenacity and resilience of the natural world. Tender green leaves unfurling from the bare twisted boughs of chestnut and lime trees, spiky branches miraculously sprouting from the arthritic...
Sonia Jebsen: Could you explain how the concept of iazzu came to be? Romana Kunz: We are challenging ourselves constantly to stay ahead of the curve. Be international, be social, be physical. They are all one! I grew up in a physical world, and I speak German. The...
Kristen Knupp: You moved to London from Grenada as a teenager, and it seems that while you were there you became interested in art and becoming an artist. What events or people moved you or attracted you to art? BGF: My first encounter and exposure to art and the...
Bernard Garo was born in 1964. After graduating with distinction from the Lausanne Art School (ECAL) in 1989, he has lived and worked in his studio in Nyon, between Lausanne and Geneva. His projects have also led him frequently to Paris, Barcelona, Berlin and in more...
Acceleration aptly describes the often frantic pace of contemporary life. Deadlines looming, “by yesterday” has replaced “asap” to express the ever more urgent nature of the rat race we may increasingly find ourselves caught up in. Portable electronic devices...
Born in Montreuil, France, in 1987, King Houndekpinkou is a Franco-Beninese ceramicist who lives in Paris and works in France, Benin, and Japan. In 2012, his discovery of the six ancient pottery kilns of Japan encouraged him to visit Bizen, Japan, each year to acquire...
Sonia Jebsen: You visited Artgenève while giving several art tours to groups, what are your impressions? Frédéric Elkaïm: I rate it as excellent in terms of the quality and standard of the galleries, the works, and the way of presenting them. On the other hand, we...
Just as there seemed to be a light beginning to glimmer at the end of the pandemic tunnel, our world has been blindsided with another daunting and devastating crisis of global geo-political scale. In the weeks leading up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late...
Sonia Jebsen: What paths did you take leading to your career as an artist? Gregory Thielker: I did everything not to be one. More exactly, I did not imagine becoming an artist in our current world. Painting and drawing have been part of my life since childhood. During...
In my last two columns, I have reflected on some of the obstacles that hinder our potential and are central to my sculptures in the series “Fractured Reality.” The accelerated pace of our media-saturated world today bombards us with an overwhelming stream of...
ArtCan is an international artist-led non-profit organization dedicated to creating exhibition opportunities for artists and building an artistic community. Each year in March, ArtCan celebrates its community through 3 Days for ArtCan. The 2022 edition will run from 2...
The year 2022 is off to an auspicious start for the Photo Elysée Museum in Lausanne. The institution's fund is enriched by an exceptional donation of 100 vintage photographs by David Douglas Duncan (1916-2018) from a private collection. Taken between 1956 and 1973,...
Heralding renewal and promise, the new year offers a chance to review and revise, to begin again with the hope of progress and improvement. Regrettably, 2022 has thus far been a repeat of the last, unfurling yet another crushing wave of the COVID19 pandemic with new...
Thomas Lesigne’s solo show “More News from Nowhere” at Galerie Mighela Shama explores themes of discovery, memory, exoticism and the relationship between color and light. The watercolors and pencil drawings demonstrate his mastery of these two forms of artistic...
Laurence de Valmy’s artwork invites us to reflect on the links between present and past, and the relationship between art and social media today. She explores the impact of social media on the way we learn about and appreciate artists and artworks. Inspired...
A story of art and friendship Besigin Tonwe-Gold is from Nigeria. She arrived in Geneva as part of her medical studies (her diplomat parents were residing there at the time) and specialized in infectious diseases. She traveled all over West Africa during her youth....
The promise of global interconnectedness on the internet often masks a far less alluring reality—the crushing alienation that can arise. With the ubiquity of social media in this day and age, the fear of ridicule, stigma, and rejection for violating social codes and...
The Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition at Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris features 120 defining works from Basquiat’s career, spanning from 1980 to 1988, shown over four floors of the Frank Gehry-designed museum. Many of the most important paintings that...
Kristen Knupp for Art Vista Magazine: I know you were trained as an architect, how did you go from architecture to art, and what inspired you to make that transition? Sarah Watson: I was an undergraduate at Yale University, which is not an art school, but...
Sonia Jebsen: What were your motivations for creating the online platform? Why the name Art Shortlist? Thibault de Watrigant: I graduated from the IESA (School of Art and Culture in Paris) then I trained in various companies such as galleries, auction houses. I have...
Facing hardship, upheaval, loss, we are often confronted head-on with the starkest aspects of the human condition. Brought to the forefront as the pandemic follows its unruly course, wreaking havoc in its wake, these relentless ordeals persistently plague (no pun...
Limna, the world’s first AI-powered art advisor, analyses millions of art world data points to provide users with price estimates about the art that inspires them. This dataset contains more than 700,000 artists, and has been tracked since 1863 across 1,000,000...
Kristen Knupp, Art Vista: Could you tell me about the International Women Photographer Association or IWPA. I read that the IWPA addresses the two goals of equality through photography in the world, and the promotion of women photographers of all origins and...
On the opening of his solo show at Xippas Gallery, Paris, Art Vista does a flashback to our interview with Dean Monogenis at the Xippas Gallery stand at Artgenève, 2019, in which he talked about creating his own reality, and adding light to a dark world. Dean...
The pandemic has brought with it a heightened awareness of many social and human issues – racial and class inequality, questions of ecology and our relationship with other species, for example. But most profoundly, it has brought us face to face with death. Nearly...
“Art is beautiful when a man's hand, head and heart work together”. This quote from John Ruskin fits very well with the poetic and original work of the French artist Michaël Cailloux. The "Luxuriance" exhibition created by curator Julia Hountou offers us the...
Dr Gindi is a medical doctor turned sculptor based near Zurich, who is interested in the connection between the mental and the physical being, and who has a deeply philosophical approach to her work. Her sculptures convey a sweeping immediacy and unwavering...
Dr. Anna Schwan, Founder of MeetFrida. I met MeetFrida, Germany’s “leading outdoor and online gallery for young contemporary art” at the Volta Fair, a satellite fair to Art Basel, where it presented pieces linked with new, innovative technology. Founded and directed...
The Blue Bird, Tempus building at the Palais des Nations, Yoshinori Mizutani, Tokyo Parrots, 2013. Courtesy of IMA gallery. A few years ago, Didier Schwarz discovered a wonderful island, that of Naoshima in Japan. This little piece of land is famous for its modern...
After a long wait, it was fantastic to be back at Art Basel seeing artwork in real life. What were the main themes at Art Basel this year? After being locked in their studios for over a year, it seems that artists have moved towards the homemade, with...
The WRP Foundation, in collaboration with Art Bongard, presents the works of a couple united in love and in artistic creation: the painter Jean Scheurer (1942) and the sculptor Chantal Carrel (1954). The title of the exhibition, Hors d’âge or Ageless, may sound...
Kristen Knupp: I understand that there is a new program at Geneva Business School that focuses on the art world, and I wanted to hear more about the new program, how it started, and how you are involved with it. Sixtine Crutchfield: I am an alumni of Geneva Business...
The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum is currently showing the Concerné.e.s/Concerned exhibition of the work of thirty student artists from the Geneva School of Art and Design (HEAD). From these pieces, two students will be selected for the...
Meeting an artist in his studio is often the promise of a motionless journey, a face-to-face that has a certain intimacy. All the more so when it is conducted in his living room. Swiss artist Stéphane Ducret welcomed us to his apartment in Pâquis to discuss his long...
Art Vista Magazine recently met with Galerie Untitled 1983's Mighela Shama Lorenceau and artists Karolina Orzelek and Thomas Lesigne to discuss their artist’s residency and exhibition of the pieces created during this period of collaboration. Galerie Untitled 1983 was...
Walking into the Sam Gilliam exhibition at Pace Gallery is like entering an exotic rainforest after being in the desert for months. The colors are surprisingly lush and almost overwhelming. Large-scale works saturated with vibrant hues reach out from the...
Nigel Cooke’s Oceans exhibition at Pace Gallery, Geneva, marks his first show in Switzerland and features five large paintings and three works on paper. Over his twenty-five year career, Cooke (b. 1973) has blurred the lines between figuration, abstraction,...
The Kiki Smith (b 1954) exhibition “Hearing You with My Eyes” at the Musée Cantonal des Beaux Arts (MCBA) focuses on the senses, in particular, sight, hearing and touch. The materials on display show Smith's full range of work, from a roomful of massive...
Street art is undoubtedly THE artistic movement of the 21st century. And 2020, marked by the health crisis, provoked the emergence of new talents, openly expressing what the public thinks to itself. Urban works are proudly displayed on the walls of our cities, the...
Laure Testard: You are an art historian, a gallerist, an art advisor, a collector… can you tell us about your career path in a few words? Fabienne Levy: I started being in love with art with my parents who were collectors and who brought me a bit everywhere. After...
Why use the term ‘barbarian’ in connection with one of Europe’s leading artists in the second half of the twentieth century? In fact, Jean Dubuffet himself would likely have been very pleased with the radical sounding title given to the temporary exhibition...
Cuba’s artistic scene, although rich and diverse, is little-known outside of its borders. The exhibition ‘EN PROCESO: Emergences Cubaines’ (In Process: Emerging Cuban Art) aimed to promote and give visibility to a selection of young Cuban artists who rarely exhibit...
From June 12 to September 30, the second edition of the Sculpture Garden takes place, a Biennale organized by artgenève this year under the curatorship of Balthazar Lovay, former director of Fri Art Kunsthalle in Fribourg. I spent a Monday morning with Balthazar...
KK: How did your shows in Switzerland come about? PN: The Musee des Beaux-Arts La Chaux-de-Fonds has a new director, David Lemaire. He had previously worked at MAMCO and saw my show there (2001). Apparently, and I might have this wrong, but at his...
Gagosian Geneva has opened its latest exhibit with works by 46-year old Swiss artist Urs Fischer who was born in Zurich and now lives and works in New York. Fischer’s pieces are exhibited and collected by the most well-known contemporary art-lovers, including Peter...
In order to understand Olivier Mosset’s work it is important to mentally travel back to the heady 1960’s, when there was a radical re-thinking of societal norms in the art world and beyond. Swiss-born Mosset moved to Paris in 1964, where he immersed himself in...
Marta was born in 1987 in Lublin, Poland and she has an MFA in Photography, as well as in Theatrology and Journalism. In her current work she explores the canons of feminine beauty and the pressure that contemporary society exerts on woman’s images. In 2016...
Inaugurating its new building on Plateforme 10, the emerging innovative cultural hub near the central train station in Lausanne, the Musée Cantonal des Beaux Arts has come back, with a few surprises. If, from the outside, the modern new edifice looks stern and square...
Trevor Paglen was born in 1974 in Maryland, and his wide-ranging work includes sculpture, journalism, and engineering as well as image-making. His solo shows include those at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Frankfurter Kunstverein, and the Eli &...
Dean Monogenis was born in New York in 1973. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and he lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Musee d’art moderne et contemporain of Saint-Etienne, and Mcnay Art...
The Middle Kingdom has undergone unprecedented development at a relentless pace. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, only 35 years have been necessary for China to evolve from the Middle Ages to a dynamic and connected modernity. This radical...
How do groundbreaking revelations in science and their repercussions on the human self-perception reflect in the art of the respective epoch? The present exhibition at the Kunstmuseum in Bern zooms in on this question on a national level, looking at Swiss art from the...
La galerie Gagosian à Genève a inauguré sa dernière exposition avec des œuvres de l'artiste suisse Urs Fischer, 46 ans, né à Zurich et qui vit et travaille actuellement à New York. Les œuvres de Fischer sont exposées et collectionnées par les amateurs d'art...
I met with Michal Rovner at Pace Gallery to see the opening on January 30, 2019, of “Evolution” which is the gallery’s first exhibition of Rovner’s work in Geneva. The show coincides with the opening of Rovner’s “Dislocation” show at Espace Muraille, also...
Kristen Knupp: What was behind the decision to open Pace Gallery in Geneva? Valentina Volchkova: Pace Gallery opened in Geneva in March, 2018, and it was based on my decision to move to Geneva. Before, I was living and working in Paris where...
A Picasso painting hangs on the walls of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Mamco) in Geneva, and it wasn’t acquired by the museum, or donated by a generous benefactor. It is in fact owned by 25,000 people who are all members of the online retailer...
When and why did you decide to become an artist? I don’t think you decide to become an artist, at least I didn’t. I always knew I wanted to express my creativity as a profession. I have tested various mediums and nurtured my artistic process for years. Last year...
BESIDES, IT’S ALWAYS THE OTHERS / D’AILLEURS C’EST TOUJOURS LES AUTRES Ai Weiwei has taken over Musee Cantonal des Beaux Arts, also known as the Palais de Rumine, and his work infiltrates every corner of the museum. This is the last exhibition in its present location...
Basel is truly a city immersed in art during Art Basel, and it is worth a trip to experience the energy that this celebration brings to a small city in the middle of Switzerland. Art Basel attracted 95,000 visitors this year with collectors from over 100...
How did you get started with your business? I’ve always had an interest in the arts. Early on in my career it was in music, however I have been collecting contemporary craft for many years and in 2012 I established Taste Contemporary Craft. I started with one...
Sculptures stole the show at Art Geneve this year with the sublime Max Bill Estate show among other sculptural offerings. The Max Bill sculptures were set in a leafy park recreated inside the Palexpo, with dramatic lighting, boxed trees and autumn leaves...
The Gurlitt art trove currently exhibited at the Kunstmuseum Bern shows the “degenerate” art portion of the collection, that is, some of the 20,000 pieces of art confiscated from German museums during World War II by the National Socialists. The rest of the...
All this excitement is understandable as Eliasson is an art-world star. A Danish – Icelandic artist born in 1967 in Copenhagen, he studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1989 to 1995. In 1990 he went to New York where he worked as a gallery assistant...
The Hockney retrospective exhibition at Centre Georges Pompidou spans his career from 1952 until the present, including his early realistic work, up to his more recent large-scale landscapes. His fascinating double portraits from 1968 to 1971 are also on display...
