HELENEUM – LUGANO
The perception of Bali as a little piece of paradise on earth owes its birth, perhaps more than any other, to the pen of Miguel Covarrubias and the camera of Gotthard Schuh. The Swiss photographer’s portrait of the island, which he proverbially called the “island of the gods”, has in fact nurtured and sustained for a long time, practically to this day, the idea/myth of the island of unrestricted love, of the paradise lost and found, of the place where a sort of magical balance between nature and culture has created the conditions for a peaceful shelter from the poisons of modern civilisation. The island portrayed by Schuh is indeed a jewel set in a luminous sea, a kind of paradise characterised by crystal-clear water, expanses of palm trees and volcanoes framed by greenery. The villages appear continuously animated by colourful festivals and ceremonies in which everyone draws nourishment from their joy of life. In Schuh’s pictures, women and children seem enveloped in an aura of eternal youth. The author’s great skill is to convey the sublime beauty of a youth that does not seem to be touched by emotions and offers itself to the eye in all its splendour, loveliness and sensitivity. The temporary exhibition is based on the famous 1941 publication, translated into several languages, entitled “Inseln der Götter, the Island of the Gods”. The entire project was organised by MUSEC in collaboration with the Fotostiftung Schweiz in Winterthur. On the occasion of the Venetian exhibition and the new edition of the catalogue in 2013, the photographic selection grew from the initial 37 prints to 60.
Gotthard Schuh was born in Germany and returned to Switzerland with his family in 1902. During his adolescence he began to paint and later enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich where his speciality was engraving. He embarked on trips to Italy and France, and in Paris he came into contact with avant-garde artists. In 1926, at the age of 29, he became interested in photography and found work as a photojournalist for the Zürcher Illustrierte. He then worked for prestigious illustrated weeklies with international circulation such as ‘Vu’, ‘Paris Match’, ‘Life’ and ‘Berliner Illustrierte’. In 1938, he set sail for Indonesia, visited Bali, Java and Sumatra. On his return, he published Inseln der Götter (1941), a book consisting of a photographic narrative and a poetic, discursive text, which was a huge success, in which he portrayed the Balinese people in their paradise on earth.
Reiterations
• 8 September – 9 October 2011, Torre Viscontea, Lecco
• 20 October 2012 – 6 January 2013, Municipal Gallery “Tina Modotti”, Udine
• 22 March – 5 May 2013, Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi, Venice
«Esovisioni» is a cycle dedicated to the peculiarities and paths of the vision of cultures through the photographic lens. The working hypothesis is that the photographer, taking the exhibition’s exotic image as a pretext has, consciously or unconsciously, returned his own inner vision, enriching the collective imagination with artful images and stereotypes of different cultural realities.