From the Paleolithic to the year 1000
Roman Geneva has bequeathed precious fragments of frescoes. The Museum of Art and History has recently received remains from the Salève site. It houses a rich collection of regional prehistoric objects as well as antiquities from Egypt, Nubia and the Near East, which attest to the long-standing interest of the Genevans in culture. To admire a splendid mosaic of the5th century, one must go under the most visited monument of the city, the Saint-Pierre cathedral.
Following the destruction of the Alamans in the 3rd century, Geneva was the scene of an unprecedented architectural revival. Then the Romanesque period was marked by the development of rural parishes.
Gothic art
Gothic sculpture was influenced by the Île-de-France region. In painting, a naturalist tendency blended with the religious subjects that had been omnipresent for centuries. The painter Konrad Witz (1400-1447) composed an original work that fascinates with its play on perspective and the mixture of influences that make him a pre-Renaissance artist. Geneva has preserved Witz's La Pêche miraculeuse, a part of the altarpiece of Saint Peter. The milestones of the Renaissance were set: frescoes gave way to landscapes and figures painted on wood.
Construction sites called upon Renaissance artists to create statues for urban fountains. In the middle of the 16th century, a good number of fountains were erected whose theme was dictated by the wealthy classes of the population: bravery and justice were honored.
Reform and Counter-Reform
In the 16th century, Jean Calvin wanted to make Geneva a model of how to live Christianity. Iconoclasm was rampant in the reformed cities of Zurich, Bern, Basel and Geneva. All images, considered harmful, were prohibited. Churches were emptied of their sculptures and works of art were destroyed. Artists turned to commissions from private individuals and executed stained glass windows and portraits for them. The International Museum of the Reformation relates this period through its objects, engravings and portraits of reformers.
In the following century, the Counter-Reformation revived commissions, especially for Baroque sculptors. Hans-Ulrich Räber displays a popular style in the eleven statues of his Blatten Entombment (1645). Simon Bachmann from Muri participated in the introduction of the Italian-Flemish Baroque style.
From the Revolution to Liotard
With the revolution of 1798, the sculptors freed themselves from the corporative system. The autonomy generates a feeling of national belonging. The exiled sculptors returned to their country and made their careers in the reformed cities. Lacking a school of fine arts or patrons, Swiss painters left to train and work abroad. Jacques-Laurent Agasse from Geneva became an animal painter in England and Johann Heinrich Füssli (1741-1825) specialized in fantastic subjects. Jean-Étienne Liotard's (1702-1789) talent as a portraitist and miniaturist was acclaimed in the European courts. But this great traveler, famous in his time, also painted the more modest, and ventured as far as the Near East. Of his varied work, we should remember his Liotard laughing, a self-portrait exhibited at the MAH.
The art of landscape
Tourism developed very early in the Alps, and the beauty of the mountains quickly became a fashionable subject. Caspar Wolf and the Genevan François Diday painted all aspects of the high altitude landscape with realism. From its invention, photography aroused the interest of the Swiss. Panoramic views of the Alps quickly became recurrent photographic motifs.
Johann Heinrich Wüest founded the Zurich Society of Fine Arts in 1769. As Switzerland became a federal state, local artists were perceived as not very assertive in the European context. Art societies were formed to promote Swiss artists. From 1840 onwards, tours, or travelling art events, took place.
A patriotic art asserts itself during the 19th century. The commissions of patriotic monuments, initiated by private individuals, made sculptors and fresco artists work. This art reached its zenith with the paintings that Ferdinand Hodler made for the Swiss National Museum. Following the new Constitution of 1848, each canton erected its own monument to reformers, scientists or warriors. Karl Alfred Lanz creates in Geneva the equestrian statue of General Guillaume-Henri Dufour.
Toepffer and Hodler
The Geneva school found its figurehead in Wolfgang Adam Toepffer (1766-1847), a genre painter and caricaturist trained in Paris. In 1850, Barthélemy Menn became director of the future Geneva School of Fine Arts, where he taught for forty-two years. A student of Menn, Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918) settled in Geneva in 1872. A major figure of symbolism, he is considered by our neighbors as one of the fathers of modern art. His raw realism disconcerted his contemporaries. His best-known paintings depict craftsmen and introduce symbolism in meticulous details and studied light.
Hans Erni
Very popular in Switzerland, the artist Hans Erni (1909-2015) chose to settle in Geneva, which he loved "for its language and its openness to France and to foreign countries in general. Erni trained in Paris where he met the cubists, Mondrian and Kandinsky. During his long career, he devoted himself to painting, sculpture and engraving. His unique style is distinguished by its outlines highlighted with white line and its plump characters accompanied by animals. He likes to confront Antiquity with the modern world, science with mythology. In Geneva, one can admire the ceramic bas-relief that adorns the façade of Manor, or Placette. In the year of his centenary, his monumental fresco commissioned by the city on the theme of peace adorns the entrance to the Palais des Nations.
Modern renewals
Throughout Switzerland, various currents are shaking up the art of the 20th century. Groups were formed: concrete abstraction gave rise to the Rot-Blau in Basel. The Dada movement in Zurich brought together Jean Arp, Sophie Taeuber, Tristan Tzara and Hugo Ball. Others looked abroad: Cunot Amiet joined Die Brücke, Le Corbusier established purism in Paris.
The son of an esteemed Impressionist painter, Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) is one of the greatest artists of our time. His spindly figure in The Walking Man has made a lasting impression, but his prints and portraits are less well known. Ernst Scheidegger, a photographer and gallery owner close to Giacometti, immortalized his life and work from 1943 until his death.
In the 1970s, the explorations continued with Body Art, Land Art, installations and Video Art. At the forefront of the promotion of contemporary art, the MAMCO has been promoting the Geneva scene since 1960. Housed in the same building, which it also shares with the Centre de la photographie, the Centre d'art contemporain promotes the emerging local and international scene.
Photography was established as an art form with the opening of the first galleries in the 1980s. Before that, in the 1950s, an early Swiss style characterized by sharpness and neutrality of images emerged. Objective photography is represented by Hans Finsler, Werner Bischof or René Burri and is opposed to an experimental photography coming from Germany. Quite late, Swiss photographers experimented with abstraction, chiaroscuro and surrealism. Let us salute the work of Robert Frank, Henriette Grindat and Kurt Blum. From now on, the Audacieuse Galerie offers original exhibitions intended to reflect the diversity of pictorial languages in contemporary photography.
Nowadays
Geneva offers a vast choice of art galleries. Air Project exhibits all forms of contemporary creation, without hierarchy, and wishes to reveal young talents. Since 2011, Espace L has become a place of reference for contemporary art and organizes demanding cultural events.
The RUINE space, dedicated to contemporary art, opened in 1987 under the slogan "No Profile, No Profit". The artists selected by dossier manage their own temporary exhibition.
The unusual Analix Forever gallery favors collaborations and projects of international scope and promotes young creation. The andata.ritorno collective presents itself as a contemporary art laboratory that defends artistic singularities in the greatest possible freedom. In the heart of the old town, the Artvera's Gallery has been presenting quality exhibitions dedicated to the greatest modern painters for twelve years.
The Bel Air Fine Art Gallery exhibits the works of Banksy, BYC, Pimax and Mr. Cat. The famous yellow feline of the Franco-Swiss artist displays his big smile in the streets of Geneva because the city, although clean, is open to all forms of expression, without denigrating graffiti. A wide variety of styles can be found on the city's walls. As a proof, the Summer Street Art Festival of Geneva welcomes in September the local and international urban scene. The amateurs have the choice between several districts of exploration, starting with that of the Grottes, behind the Cornavin station. The hunt for street art continues to the west, in Jonction, on the banks of the Rhône and around the Pointe. Talents such as Jazi, Eazyone or the EDK Crew collective find inspiring supports here. The Geneva graffiti artists let the colors explode on the walls of an old restaurant on the avenue de Champel, including a fresco of Frankenstein that can be spotted from far away. In Carouge, the outside and inside walls of the halles de la Fonderie are covered with frescoes. During your excursions, don't miss the nuggets that embellish the bridges of Geneva.
