Schall und Rauch. Die wilden 20er

The 1920s stand like no other decade for new departures and relapses. In no other period of the 20th century was people’s longing for innovation as great as it was at that time. Urbanistic visions were drafted, cities grew at breathtaking speed, classic social role models were questioned and broken open, disadvantaged and oppressed minorities made themselves heard in culture and politics. Alongside an everyday life that took the interests of workers into account there arose a growing leisure industry. The high degree of innovation of this period was directly reflected in the experimental spirit of the arts. What is surprising is that its products have lost nothing of their topicality. Unlike many exhibitions devoted to the 1920s, the show and the book do not consider styles such as Bauhaus, Dada and Neue Sachlichkeit or the design and architectural icons of modernism separately, but place them in dialogue, so that the stylistic heterogeneity of those years of new departure emerges with particular clarity. The focus is on Berlin, Paris, Vienna and Zurich, and all media are covered: painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, film and collage. Lesser-known positions, and those of women in particular, are also to be given a platform. Contemporary artists who explicitly engage with the formal language and the themes of the 1920s build the bridge to our present.

Artists:
Josef Albers, Hans Arp, Kader Attia, Johannes Baargeld, Marc Bauer, Benito, Erwin Blumenfeld, Constantin Brancusi, André Breton, Marcel Breuer, Suse Byk, Coco Chanel, Serge Charchoune, Salvador Dalí, Adolf Dietrich, Otto Dix, Dodo, Kees van Dongen, Theo van Doesburg, Marcel Duchamp, Jean Dunand, Max Ernst, Theodore Lux Feininger, Hans Finsler, Barthel Gilles, Natalja Gontscharowa, George Grosz, Max Ernst Haefeli, Raoul Hausmann, Raphael Hefti, Heinrich Hoerle, René Herbst, Hannah Höch, Karl Hubbuch, Martin Imboden, Johannes Itten, Pierre Jeanneret, Rashid Johnson, Paul Joostens, Germaine-Paule Jourmard, Grethe Jürgens, Wassily Kandinsky, Elisabeth Karlinsky, Lajos Kassák, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, Frank Kupka, Rudolf von Laban, Michail Larionow, Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger, Lucien Lelong, Jacques Lipchitz, Jeanne Mammen, Elli Marcus, Fabian Marti, László Moholy-Nagy, Lucia Moholy, Piet Mondrian, Alexandra Navratil, Walter Niggli, Amédée Ozenfant, Trevor Paglen, Gret Palucca, Nicolas Party, Charlotte Perriand, Pablo Picasso, Paul Poiret, Ljubow Sergejewna Popowa, Man Ray, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Hans Richter, Gerrit T. Rietveld, Vitorelli Rita, Hans Robertson, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Jean-Lambert-Rucki, Charlotte Rudolph, Thomas Ruff, Christian Schad, Xanti Schawinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, Wilhelm Schnarrenberger, Georg Scholz, Max Ulrich Schopp, Kurt Schwitters, Shirana Shahbazi, Mario Sironi, Veronika Spierenburg, Anton Stankowski, Warwara Fjodorowna Stepanowa, Niklaus Stoecklin, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Marianne My Ullmann, Félix Vallotton, Madeleine Vionnet, Nikolai Wassilieff, Gustav Wunderwald, Frantisek Zelenka

Exhibition:
Kunsthaus Zürich, 3/7 – 11/10/2020