Kunstmuseum Bern, until 24.10.2021

As usual, the online gallery team invites you to come visit with them the exhibitions of various French and Swiss museums. She puts her knowledge of professional artists at your disposal to talk about Pictorial art, sculpture, conceptual art ….
The online gallery does not charge any participation fees for these visits.
Entrance to the museum (when there is a charge for access), transport (road or rail) and any stay (hotels, guest rooms, catering, etc.) are the responsibility of each person with the organizations concerned.

The sculptor August Gaul (1869–1921) is considered a pioneer of both animal sculpture as an autonomous genre and modern abstraction. His sculptures depict zoo, domesticated and farm animals as beings with individual character and pulsating liveliness. 

In art, animals became symbols of a critique of modern civilisation and a yearning for a supposedly unspoilt state of nature. With more than 250 sculptures, paintings, prints and drawings, photographs and books the exhibition presents, for the first time, Gaul’s oeuvre in dialogue with contemporary works of art and testimonies from science, and popular culture. 

“What attracts me about animals, is essentially artistic …. I make animals because it gives me pleasure.” With these words, the German sculptor August Gaul (1869–1921) described his interest in animal subjects, which apparently fascinated him primarily as a formal challenge in sculptural design. August Gaul, who as a member of the Berlin Secession was counted among Germany’s foremost sculptors around 1900, is considered a pioneer of both “autonomous animal-sculpture” and modernist abstraction in the sculptural arts. He was one of the first artists to free animals from allegorical-narrative functions – e.g., in monuments – and focus on the animal for its own sake. He showed animals in their individual essence, apart from any functional relationship to humans.

Warning: Colonial Images
This exhibition includes two chapters with images created within a colonial context, reflecting racist attitudes and depicting people in a degrading manner. These works demand a heightened sensibility. Seven experts for colonial history and post-colonial theory and anti-racism activists were invited to write commentaries, with the aim of encouraging critical reflection. Within the exhibition, visitors will find these texts next to the pertinent objects.