CH-8001 Zürich
Switzerland
Hours: Tuesday–Sunday 11am–5pm,
Wednesday 11am–8pm
Museum Haus Konstruktiv is the leading institution for constructivist-concrete, and conceptual art in Switzerland, and is highly regarded internationally. This art form, characterized by the accomplishments of the Zurich Concretists surrounding Max Bill, Richard Paul Lohse, Camille Graeser, and Verena Loewensberg from the 1930s to 1950s, is now so essential to the landscape of modernism, that it is no longer possible to imagine this landscape without it. We have made it our task to keep this art-historical heritage alive and to link it to contemporary art. One of our objectives is to demonstrate the interfaces that connect the legacy of constructivist-concrete art with the international art scene – and the past with the present.
Six to nine temporary exhibitions a year, consistently conceived according to clear programmatic perspectives, make Museum Haus Konstruktiv unique within the cultural landscape. Oriented toward demonstrating the links that connect the pioneers of constructivist-concrete and conceptual art with international contemporary art, these exhibitions bring renowned positions, new positions, and rediscovered historical positions into a dialog with contemporary artists’ approaches today.
We have made it our task to keep this art-historical heritage alive and to link it to contemporary art. Our exhibitions are essentially about the continuation of this legacy into the present and, at the same time, about how contemporary art concepts are reflected in historical predecessors. This dialog usually takes place in two to three parallel solo or group exhibitions, in which the intellectual or formal connections and differences between generations of artists become evident.
The art-historical background comprises Russian constructivism and the constructivist-concrete stimuli of 1920s and 1930s Western Europe, including the Bauhaus, but also kinetic art, op art and 1960s American minimal art, as well as 1960s conceptual art, which arose from the tendency toward reduction that all of the above have in common.