Travelling, thinking and exploring, this is the expression you will had in the Centre Dürrenmatt in Neuchâtel until the end of November...
How do you define the world ? And how do you explore it ?
While you enter the Centre Friedrich Dürrenmatt and you go down the impressive and good-looking building of Mario Botta, you enter into the personal and diverse world of the artist.
Therefore, the exhibition show an assemblage of works from every period of the artist while questioning his relation with his country, the European Union and the world. But, how did he know this world ? And how did he define it ?
As a teenager, Friedrich Dürrenmatt leave Switzerland to travel around Germany in Bike with his friends and family, he was sixteen. But as he become older, he travelled more efficiently on train, bike or boat all around the globe to discover new worlds, artists, museums, and to find a new purpose to his art.
From his activist period about injustices and political belief, to social and environmental aspect and fight. Nonetheless, those years were promising for him and he discovered his committed side of, what will become, one of the most important artist of Switzerland.
From his home to the regime...
While he encounters many landscapes during his life, the one from his hometown will never leave him. The artist was born in 1921 in the village of Konolfingen (in the Bernese Emmental Canton in Switzerland) and he will stay there for the first fourteen years of his life.
But as he moved in bigger and more important city such as Bern or Basel, he missed the landscape and the freshness of Switzerland, this is why he will settle back to Neuchâtel. But before everything, the first big trip will be at the age of sixteen, when he will cycle through Nazi Germany.
In the 1950s, his trips will increase due to his importance as an artist (especially for the theater) and the use of car and his personal plane.
1960, Fast and powerful
While the plays of Friedrich Dürrenmatt is more successful than anticipated, the artist travelled from city to city, from continent to country to enjoy and help during the duration of the show and the tour. Therefore, the play The visit of the Old Lady will help him discovered Milan, Strasbourg and London.
More or less, he will be inspired by those trip and the earlier one he made in the 40s and 50s, when he will travel to USSR and the United States.
Thought and resonance
20 years later, the story will not be the same, after the death of his first wife in 1983, he will try to rethink himself. While he will meet a new women through if friend Maximilian Schell, he will accepted her to do a documentary about him, his life and his art.
The couple will rethink what they want, together and travel the world at a rapid past, while giving him a lot of inspiration from his trip and literature he read during those long hours of transports.
Informations about the exhibition
Place: Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel
Date: 17.7.2021 – 21.11.2021
Curator: Gabriel Grossert
Ticket: Available at the front desk of the museum
Informations about the Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel
Centre Dürrenmatt Neuchâtel
Pertuis-du-Sault 74
CH-2000 Neuchâtel
Phone: +41 58 466 70 60
Mail: cdn@nb.admin.ch