"Their Friendship and Their Art": Bechtler Family Favorites
June 22, 2024 – August 19, 2024
Based in Zurich, Switzerland, Bessie and Hans Bechtler began collecting modern art in the 1950s, and over the next several decades they supported and befriended many of the most influential artists of the day. They passed on their love of modern art and collecting to their son and museum founder, Andreas Bechtler, and his family. “What an incredible journey this has been,” Andreas has remarked. “When my parents left me part of their collection, I knew I needed to do something special and worthy of the artists who had given so much to my family—their friendship and their art. Charlotte is my home, so I decided to give back to the city in a small way.” This exhibition showcases many of the Bechtler family’s favorite works, selected by Andreas Bechtler and his daughters Fiona Bechtler-Levin, Tanja Bechtler, and Viviane Bechtler-Smith, in consultation with the museum’s curator Katia Zavistovski. Highlighting the practice of over 30 artists—among them Edgar Degas, Jasper Johns, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Sam Francis—the installation features both icons of the collection and works with personal significance.
On the Horizon:
Landscapes from the Collection
On View February 17 – August 19, 2024
This exhibition features work by nearly twenty artists from the museum's collection that explore diverse approaches to depicting landscapes. Artists like Isabel Quintanilla, Markus Raetz, and Italo Valenti portray idyllic scenes; in contrast, Paul Harcharik explores the grim impact of industrialization. Other artists including Nicolas de Staël, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, and Zao Wou-Ki push the boundaries of traditional landscapes with wholly abstract compositions. With works spanning over fifty years, On the Horizon: Landscapes from the Collection delves into artists' varied engagements with the natural world and evolving environments.
Edouard Pignon, Le Pommier, 1942, Oil on canvas, 12 3/8 x 15 ¾ in. © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Edouard Pignon, Le Pommier, 1942, Oil on canvas, 12 3/8 x 15 ¾ in. © 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris
Eduardo Chillida, Leku I, 1968, Steel, 22 ½ x 18 ¼ x 39 ½ in. © Zabalaga-Leku, Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2024.
Alyson Shotz, detail of Coalescence, 2006, Glass beads and wire. On loan from the Bank of America Collection.
Eduardo Chillida: 100 Years
December 9, 2023 – August 18, 2024
Eduardo Chillida: 100 Years commemorates the centenary of the influential Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida (1924–2002). Presenting a selection of sculptures and works on paper from the Bechtler Museum’s permanent collection, this intimate exhibition offers a focused look at the artist’s pioneering and varied practice. Renowned for his monumental sculptures, Chillida also created domestically-scaled sculptures, drawings, collages, and prints, examples of which will be on view. Together these works illustrate the great influence that Chillida’s upbringing in the Basque region of Spain and his early training in architecture had on his unique artistic vision, and demonstrate his enduring exploration of space, light, form, and material.
Alyson Shotz: Coalescence
December 9, 2023 – August 18, 2024
Blurring the boundaries between art and science, American artist Alyson Shotz (born 1964) is widely acclaimed for her sculptures and installations that use synthetic materials such as glass, mirrors, plastic, and stainless steel to harness intangible forces of the natural world like gravity, space, and light. On loan from the Bank of America Collection, this single-work installation is a dazzling sculpture made of glass beads and wire that hangs from the ceiling, Coalescence (2006) resembles a hovering cloud, a massive spider web glistening with morning dew, or a cluster of atoms magnified to monumental scale. Its open form challenges traditional notions of sculpture as grounded, solid, or weighty, and reveals Shotz’s abiding interest in perception: calling attention to the relationship between an artwork, the viewer, and the space they share.
COMING SOON
Meret Oppenheim, Near Brasilia from Parapapillonneries portfolio, 1975, lithograph on paper.
© 2024 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ProLitteris, Zürich. Collection of the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, 2005.1051.
Chance Encounters:
Surrealism Then and Now
On View August 31, 2024 – March 3, 2025
Surrealism was a revolutionary artistic and literary movement that was founded in Paris in 1924 but soon spread across the globe. Emphasizing the fantastical, dream imagery, and subconscious thought, Surrealism privileged experimentation and uninhibited modes of expression, producing radical new techniques and visual forms that continue to inspire artists today. Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the movement, Chance Encounters: Surrealism Then and Now pairs examples of historical Surrealism from the museum’s collection with works by contemporary artists whose practices extend the legacies of Surrealist exploration. Paying tribute to the inclusive and international scope of the movement, the exhibition includes works by Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Meret Oppenheim, Germaine Richier, and Rufino Tamayo alongside that of Julie Curtiss, Marcel Dzama, Heri Dono, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Thomas Lerooy, Naudline Pierre, and Shoshanna Weinberger.
![Rojas_tired-of-thinking-2021_CR00163PNT_Phillip-Maisel-1200x1428[10].jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cfceab_0c5d42ff366e4b1b92a0f497ffde9e41~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_473,h_563,al_c,q_80,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/Rojas_tired-of-thinking-2021_CR00163PNT_Phillip-Maisel-1200x1428%5B10%5D.jpg)
Clare Rojas: Past the Present
On View September 21, 2024 – January 20, 2025
Over the past twenty years, Clare Rojas (b. 1976) has developed a multifaceted art practice that draws on a wide range of inspirations, from ecofeminism to diverse literary and musical sources, the folklore of her Peruvian ancestry, the crisp formalism of 20th-century abstraction, and the fantastical spirit of Surrealism, which she has shaped into her own unique visual vocabulary. Clare Rojas: Past the Present features nearly 100 examples of the artist’s work from the past five years, including large-scale and intimate paintings, bronze sculptures, works on paper, and an installation of wallpaper designed in collaboration with Schumacher x Peg Norriss. While Rojas has veered between abstraction and magical realist figuration throughout her career, the compelling recent work included in this exhibition deftly conjoins these modes of artmaking in compositions that center female empowerment and that marry an exploration of the legacies—and lacunae—of modernism with contemporary experience, confronting issues surrounding representation, the fragile state of the environment, and the patterns of everyday life.
The exhibition launches the Bechtler Museum’s 15th anniversary celebration, and with it, a year of exhibitions and programs dedicated to important female artists of the modern and contemporary periods.
Clare Rojas, Tired of thinking, 2021, oil on linen, 50 x 40 in. Collection of Angella and David Nazarian, Los Angeles, CA.
Photo: Phillip Maisel, courtesy of the artist, Jessica Silverman, San Francisco, , and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York.