In the collection of Kunstmuseum Luzern is a considerable part of the varied oeuvre, as beautiful as it is melancholy, of Entlebuch-born artist Hans Emmenegger (1866-1940). As a painter ‘between Böcklin and Hodler’, he was last shown to a wide audience in the 1970s. The coming exhibition focuses not on his models, friends or contemporaries, but on the uniqueness of his painting.

Hans Emmenegger painted landscapes and still lifes, occasional nudes and studies of animals and architecture. His paintings reveal a wistful yearning for the ‘magnificently bleak lonely area’ around Lake Lucerne. His themes are always surprisingly modern: hills on which bare trees grow, harsh thaws or shadowy areas of woodland with patches of sunlight. The artist works with decorative contrasts, and is particularly interested in the optical effect of light and colour. With almost a hundred works, including forty from our own holdings, the exhibition provides a comprehensive overview of the maverick of oeuvre of this important painter.