MERET OPPENHEIM — My Exhibition

The term “surreal” effectively means dreamlike, unreal, standing above the real. It became stylistically influential with the “Surrealist Manifesto” published by the author André Breton in 1924. Following on from Sigmund Freud’s “The Interpretation of Dreams” he wanted to penetrate people’s secret desires, taboo longings and instincts to open up the unconscious as the site of artistic inspiration.

To achieve this the Surrealists developed new techniques such as recording dreams, combining unrelated objects, automatic writing and drawing as well as new collaborative methods. They wanted to dissolve not only the boundaries between dream and reality, fantasy and reason, but also the boundaries of bourgeois ideas of morality and values. In Paris a group of personalities came together, primarily from the spheres of film, theatre, literature and the visual arts. Among them Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, René Magritte, Dora Maar, Meret Oppenheim, Man Ray, Tristan Tzara and many others.

The Surrealists were one of the first groups in which women artists had the same status as men. But in spite of the revolutionary ideals that covered all areas of life, most of the men followed traditional role models.

In protest against the conservative Swiss art policy, three Basel artists formed Group 33 in 1933. The swiftly growing association brought together artists from a great variety of stylistic trends, and tried to influence art policy and the awarding of public commissions, which were usually given to classically trained artists working in the figurative tradition.

Group 33 was founded in the period leading up to the Second World War. Before and during the war years, “Intellectual National Defence” was the programme advocated in Switzerland, turning to so-called “Swiss values” with a view to constructing a cultural independence for Switzerland.

The anti-fascist Group 33 categorically rejected the idea of a purpose-led “national” art. Its members included Otto Abt, Walter Bodmer, Serge Brignoni, Paul Camenisch, Theo Eble, Walter Kurt Wiemken and Irène Zurkinden, among others. Some taught at Basel General College of Applied Art (Allgemeine Gewerbeschule), where Oppenheim also briefly studied.

In the 1950s one venue in Bern’s old town became a prime meeting point for artists. In the “Café de Commerce” famous artists like Serge Brignoni, Meret Oppenheim and Otto Tschumi met the younger generation of Lilly Keller, Dieter Roth and Daniel Spoerri. Arnold Rüdlinger, the curator of the Kunsthalle, called the café his office and invited everyone back there for drinks after exhibition openings. In his Kunsthalle program he showed exhibitions with works of contemporary post-war trends such as Informel and Abstract Expressionism.

Rüdlinger’s successor in the Kunsthalle, the curator Franz Meyer, was equally associated with American contemporary painting, but he also encouraged young sculptors in iron like Jean Tinguely and Bernhard Luginbühl. His exhibitions and legendary parties attracted important artists like Isamu Noguchi, Alberto Giacometti and Sam Francis to Bern.

The international appeal of the Kunsthalle reached a further peak with the appointment of Harald Szeemann, known today as an “artist-curator”. In 1969 he conceived the exhibition “Live in your head. When Attitudes Become Form”, which attracted sparse visitor numbers but caused a stir around the world. The radicality of the works of conceptual art, Arte Povera and Land Art, as well as the collaboration between curator and artists was new and revolutionary for a wide audience. The exhibition placed Bern definitively on the map of international contemporary art.

After the Second World War new avant-garde movements came into being whose diverse forms of expression were not always easily definable, and which manifested themselves locally in different ways.

The name NOUVEAUX RÉALISTES refers to a group of artists active from the 1950s onwards. One of their typical methods is the combination or accumulation of everyday objects. In these works, chance and commodity character are brought together to form a new magic of things. The Nouveaux Réalistes include, among others, Arman, César, Yves Klein, Niki de Saint Phalle, Daniel Spoerri and Jean Tinguely.

The multifaceted POP-ART movement comes into being in the 1950s in Britain and in the USA. Their works both celebrate and criticize consumer society. The pictorial worlds of the mass media are incorporated into artistic works. The important international figures of the movement include David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenburg, Markus Raetz, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol.

ARTE POVERA emerges in Italy in the 1960s. The name (“poor art”) refers to the use of low-value materials such as wood, paper, fabrics or light. Arte Povera criticizes the negative effects of consumer society, industrialization and the dogma of progress at any cost. Important representatives include Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Jannis Kounellis, Marisa Merz, Mario Merz and Nakis Panayotidis.

In 1971 Linda Nochlin’s ground-breaking essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” was published in the USA; it sparked a feminist debate in the art world. Nochlin curated a series of exhibitions showing only works by women artists. Her article had a profound influence on curatorial practice and the re-evaluation of women artists.

While new exhibition practices were being tried out in the USA, women in Switzerland were still fighting for their basic political rights. In 1971 Switzerland was one of the last European countries to grant women voting rights. One crucial event was the 1969 “March on Bern”, vociferously demanding equality of the sexes on a political level. The referendum held subsequently, in which paradoxically only men were allowed to participate, brought the desired result.

One early Swiss campaigner for women’s rights was Lisa Wenger-Ruutz (1858–1941). The grandmother of Meret Oppenheim was a trained painter and one of the most widely read authors of her time.