The Prints 1997-2017
November 5, 2017–January 28, 2018
Rue Marie-Anne-Calame 6
2400 Le Locle
Switzerland
Hours: Wednesday–Sunday 11am–5pm
T +41 32 933 89 50
mbal@ne.ch
Aiming at offering a programme that is both original and audacious, MBAL Museum of Fine Arts Le Locle exhibits established artists, as well as undeniable talents awaiting discovery. Located in Le Locle, Switzerland, MBAL organises 10 to 12 exhibitions a year, with a focus on print and photography from the last 50 years.
Painter, sculptor, as well as prolific etcher and engraver, Georg Baselitz celebrates his 80th birthday in January 2018. On this occasion, MBAL brings together 180 prints made in the past 20 years. Since his discovery of etching and engraving in the 1960s, Georg Baselitz has constantly put the possibilities offered by these techniques to the test. The etchings, the wood engravings, and the linocuts that he makes alongside his paintings contribute to his quest for the most effective stroke. As a result, we can discern a clarification of his compositions, which he wishes to be as pure and elegant as a “schema” (or a type of coding). With Baselitz, the etching and engraving atelier is a laboratory that permits him to revisit motifs and to work on gesture and gaze. Across different techniques, the artist explores the reversal of the figures that he works in his paintings. However, he does not simply exhibit upside-down works that were made right-side up. Rather, he executes the patterns upside-down in order to continually re-examine his gestures and gaze. Bestiary and human representations—the horse, the dog, the eagle, as well as the fragmented body or even his self-portrait—are at present part of a baselitzien repertoire that the artist never ceases to reinvent. Unlike painting, where it is possible to cover up and rectify at any time, digging a form into a lino or wooden plate, just like scratching a copper plate, requires a form of determination, as well as a physical and intellectual commitment. Baselitz, one of the most fertile and audacious creative energies of our time, is without contest a great master of engraving and etching, which he practices to this day as an art in its own right.
The exhibition is made in collaboration with VRB Dachau and Gallery Sabine Knust, Munich.
