With Joseph Beuys, Terry Fox, Jürgen Klauke, Urs Lüthi, Annemarie von Matt, Ana Mendieta, André Thomkins, Ben Vautier, Felix Maria Diogg

The collection of the Museum of Art Lucerne is being given various different outings within the exhibition programme. Collecting, research and display will each be given a different weight.
In biannual presentations of the collection, works by various artists, from different eras and in different media, will be brought together under a single heading. This creates the possibility of a dialogue that reveals new aspects of the works, and opens up a broad field of association. Apart from the presentation of new acquisitions, the exhibition will also provide an opportunity to see works that are hardly ever shown, as well as actual highlights of the collection. The presentations will be complemented by a few works on loan.

The exhibition ‘Characters’ is devoted to nine artistic figures, in nine spaces. In their different ways, the artists are all present as characters within their works. They approach us as self-performers, actors, living sculptures or agents of a specific, partly concluded action. Where they appear in actions and turn towards the viewer, an immediate interest in the artist’s character is aroused. We inevitably begin to assess the person in front of us: Who is that? What kind of person was he? Is she showing herself as she really was? We want to know more, we imagine their personality traits, or we would like to have met them. The exhibition also includes works in which no character is directly reproduced. But biographical notes, a linguistic appeal or the presentation of the work as the conclusion of a process of action refer us to a specific authorship. These works live through the absence of the agent, and we seek the image of the artist through the art work.

At the centre of the exhibition, with works from the 1940s and taking us right through until the present day, is the space containing eight paintings by the Central Swiss portrait-painter Felix Maria Diogg. Since training with Nidwalden artist Johann Melchior Wyrsch, throughout his career Diogg has devoted himself almost exclusively to the painting of portraits. In his work, Diogg has engaged to an extraordinary extent with the individuality of the sitter. He has avoided stylisation of any kind. Clothes and attributes are secondary. The artist’s interest has been focused on the face and its expression, with the eyes as the true keys to the personality. Through the gaze that the sitters direct at us, we are able to enter the place formerly occupied by the painter, and the works act as a bridge across time.