“La montagne en perspective” exhibition at the Museum of Art and History

“La montagne en perspective” creates a dialogue between iconic and unusual works of art, focussing on the theme of mountains. A firm favourite in Switzerland and broadly addressed in numerous exhibitions, this theme is explored here in a deliberately singular approach, with a series of images of the Alps presented from different, and often surprising, viewpoints.

These different perspectives have, in the past, given rise to a wide range of curious works reflecting the fascinating diversity of this pictorial genre - and continue to do so today.

The exhibition pays tribute to the artists who, having invented the genre in the 16th century, have continued renewing it up to the present day. Without any specific timeline, it brings the works together according to the viewpoints from which the painters contemplate the mountains, highlighting the personal vision of each artist.

Combining conventions, surprises and questions, the presentation thus fosters poetic escapades while calling on the senses, not only visual but also aural and physical.

The visit includes fifty paintings, works of graphic art, sculptures, photographs, videos and furnishings. Most of the works presented are drawn from the extensive collection of the MAH, which boasts a large number of mountain landscapes, a telling sign of the interest in this theme shown in Geneva.

Several great landscape painters

The exhibition brings together the works of several great landscape painters (Pieter Brueghel the Elder, Alexandre Calame, Barthélémy Menn, Auguste Baud-Bovy, Ferdinand Hodler, Alexandre Perrier), famous illustrators who accompanied dangerous expeditions to the very highest summits (Marc-Théodore Bourrit, Pierre-Guillaume Martel) and contemporary artists who have diversified the forms of representation (Markus Raetz, Balthasar Burkhard, Laurence Bonvin, Laurence Piaget-Dubuis, Michel Grillet, Peter Fischli and David Weiss).

Viewed from every angle, now immovable and almost eternal, now fragile and threatened, mountains are presented from a range of different perspectives. They are shown to be dizzying or peaceful, sometimes surprising and always moving. The works exhibited explore the wild or, in contrast, tamed nature of mountains and, with climate-related issues currently a burning topic of public debate, question their indestructibility.

From 23 September 2022 to 12 February 2023.