Ombres

28.06 – 27.10.2019

After the success of the exhibition Windows, from the Renaissance to the Present Day. Dürer, Monet, Magritte… in 2013, the Fondation de l’Hermitage, Lausanne, continues its exploration of major themes in western iconography by inviting visitors to discover the many facets of shadow in art. The exhibition Shadows, from the Renaissance to the Present Day will feature an entirely new selection of nearly 140 works, representing 500 years of art history and a very diverse range of artistic forms, from painting to installation, sculpture, prints, drawing, cut-outs, photography and video.

Casting a shadow, from the 16^th century to the 21^st
This major international exhibition will include works on loan from both prestigious museums and private collections, exploring the close links between shadow and art and the endlessly varied ways in which shadows have been depicted since they first appeared in painting in the late Middle Ages.

Visitors will be invited on a journey through centuries and themes, juxtaposing masterpieces of western art in an entirely new way to explore the sustained interest in shadow shown by artists in all genres, from self-portraits (Rembrandt, Eugène Delacroix) to explorations of perspective (Baccio Bandinelli, Pieter de Hooch), chiaroscuro (Luca Cambiaso, Jacob Jordaens, Joseph Wright of Derby) and the dramatic landscapes of the Romantics (Caspar David Friedrich, Carl Gustav Carus, Wilhelm Bendz). The exhibition also highlights shadows in the work of the Impressionists (Claude Monet) and post-Impressionists (Henri-Edmond Cross, Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida), whose art reflects the arrival of artificial light and work on the theory of colour in the 19^th century. At the turn of the 20^th century, sharp backlighting and powerful shadows played a key role in the search for an innovative formal language of contrast (Félix Vallotton, Hans Emmenegger). The highpoints of the exhibition include a section bringing together the disturbing, paradoxical shadows of the symbolists (William Degouve de Nuncques, Léon Spilliaert), expressionists (Edvard Munch), surrealists (Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, Max Ernst) and artists of the New Objectivity (Christian Schad, Niklaus Stoecklin). Meanwhile the uses of shadow in modern and contemporary art are reflected in iconic works by Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Christian Boltanski and Joseph Kosuth, and videos by artists (Vito Acconci, Jean Otth, Thomas Maisonnasse) reinterpreting the great founding myths linking shadow to art and knowledge from Plato to Pliny. The exhibition is enhanced by a large photographic section, notably including striking images by Edward Steichen, Man Ray, Lee Friedlander et Wolfgang Tillmans, revealing that photography too has its constant shadow…