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Yves Klein & Rotraut

For the Spring-Summer 2009 the City of Lugano presents a new critical exhibition covering the works of Yves Klein (1928-1962), taking place in the halls of the Museo d'Arte, alongside twenty-two metallic sculptures by Rotraut distributed throughout the city in squares and parks.

The exhibition, curated by Bruno Cora and Daniel Moquay and organized in collaboration with the Yves Klein Archives in Paris, focuses on the work of Klein, established as one of the leading artists of the Sixties, and his partnership with Rotraut, an artist close to him in terms of both poetics and imagery as well as being his wife. The adventure of the two artists had continued along parallel paths for a period, but was suddenly interrupted in 1962 when Klein prematurely passed away: while Klein's work would become a mythical reference for the European and international generation, Rotraut's work instead slowly changed towards a plastic attitude, representing, through forms of pure synthesis, simple and at the same time, universal states of mind, such as joie de vivre, a primitive innocence, the playing, dancing, the power of nature, colours, beauty of shapes.

The exhibition begins in the rooms of the Museo d'Arte with a series of paintings making it possible to trace the course of Rotraut's various experiments with form and materials from the earliest works to the most recent. The artist's lively monumental sculptures in painted steel and iron of the period 1991-2009 are installed so as to form a route running through the city of Lugano from Villa Malpensata to the municipal park and Villa Ciani by way of the lakeside, via Nassa, piazza Riforma, via Canova and piazza Indipendenza. The sculptures are box-shaped works of metal painted in solid colors and designed to communicate their joyous and in many respects playful radiance to their open-air settings.

For the Municipality of Lugano
Giovanna Masoni Brenni
Head of the Department of Cultural Activities