Masi Lugano celebrates Ernst Scheidegger with ‘Face to face’

On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Ernst Scheideggeril Art Museum of Italian Switzerland (Masi) dedicates to the famous photographer the tribute exhibition ‘Face to face. Giacometti, Dalí, Miró, Ernst, Chagall. Homage to Ernst Scheidegger’. Set up in the headquarters of cultural center Lugano art and culture (Lac), the exhibition retraces the photojournalist’s production through an interesting juxtaposition between his famous artist portraits and the important works of the immortalized painters. Curated by Tobia Bezzola and Taisse Grandi Venturithe exhibition presents for the first time a group of youth shots recently found in the archive of Ernst Scheidegger Foundation.

Collaborator of the Magnum Photos agency, Scheidegger was also a painter, graphic designer, director, gallery owner and publisher. A regular visitor to the Parisian avant-garde art scene, he frequented the great names of twentieth-century art such as Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Max Bill and Marc Chagall. Among his most iconic artist portraits we remember those dedicated tofriend Alberto Giacomettimet during his military service in the Engadine in 1943.

The exhibition opens with unpublished works youthful shots made in black and white with a Rolleiflex machine. These are private images that represent the result of the artist’s wanderings between Switzerland, Italy, the Netherlands, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. From Belgrade to Paris, the photographs portray the inhabitants of aEurope devastated by conflict. The second section investigates the friendship with Alberto Giacometti through rare ‘vintage prints’ created during some meetings both in Stampa and in Maloja as well as in the sculptor’s atelier in Montparnasse. The bond of trust established between the two allows Scheidegger to steal emblematic shots such as the frontal portrait of Giacomettilater reproduced on the Swiss 100 franc note.

It was in the French capital that the photographer began to frequent the avant-garde painting scene, specializing in artist portraits. In the next section, the figures of the great twentieth century artists with whom Scheidegger found himself face to face parade. Rarely posed, artists are often caught at the easel or drawing table. This is the case of Verena Loewensberg, Germane Richier, Cuno Amiet, Hans Arp, Max Ernst, Oskar Kokoschka, Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger and Henry Moore. The gaze on the great representatives of the avant-garde also extends to the atelier and art objects, revealing some aspects of the creative process.

Organized in collaboration with the Kunsthaus Zürich, the exhibition is accompanied by the volume ‘Ernst Scheidegger. Photographed with texts by Tobia Bezzola, Philippe Büttner, Alessa Widmer and Helene Grob. The catalog is published in its German and English edition by Scheidegger & Spiess and in the Italian edition by Edizioni Casagrande Bellinzona.