CHARLOTTE, NC.- Art Informel is a radical approach to abstraction that emerged in Europe in the years following World War II. In response to the horrors of the war, many artists rejected what they believed was realism’s susceptibility to nationalistic narratives, and sought to develop a universal visual language that communicated freedom, individual expression, and inner states of being. Championing this new artistic tendency, in 1952 the French curator and art critic Michel Tapié organized the groundbreaking exhibition Un Art Autre—or Art of Another Kind—and published an accompanying catalogue, in which he coined the term “Art Informel.” Based on the French word informe, meaning “unformed” or “formless,” Art Informel renounced traditional rules of representation and instead emphasized bold, gestural marks that conveyed vitality, emotion, and spontaneity. Drawn from the
Bechtler Museum’s permanent collection, the works on view are by a number of artists who were included in Tapié’s 1952 exhibition—such as Karel Appel, Jean Dubuffet, Sam Francis, Jean-Paul Riopelle, and Wols—as well as other key figures affiliated with Art Informel—among them Hans Hartung, Maria Scotoni, Pierre Soulages, and Walasse Ting—each of whom took different approaches to a style that simultaneously reflected a fractured world and that illustrated utopian aspirations for the future.
Lightness and Weight: Japanese Art from the Collection
On View August 12 – November 26, 2023
This exhibition foregrounds work by Japanese artists in the Bechtler Museum’s permanent collection, including Shikō Munakata (1903–1975), Kumi Sugaï (1919–1996), and Tetsuya Yamada (born 1968), all of whom are recognized for their innovative approaches to time-honored Japanese artmaking materials and forms. Employing bold and emotive lines, Munakata is best known for his woodblock prints that merged traditional Japanese art with a visual vocabulary influenced in part by European Post-Impressionism and German Expressionism. Kumi Sugaï likewise looked to both East Asian and Western sources. Galvanized by an interest in avant-garde painting, in 1952 Sugaï moved to Paris, where he created paintings and prints that combine the aesthetics of calligraphy with the gestural abstraction of Art Informel, demonstrating the cross-cultural dialogue taking place at the time. Contemporary artist Tetsuya Yamada emigrated to the United States in 1994, and established a practice that explores tensions between the organic and industrially-made, and between lightness and weight. Working with materials including ceramic, wood, and paper, Yamada’s sculptures and installations draw inspiration from Japanese pottery and architecture; modern art by Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, and Isamu Noguchi; and the relationship between art and everyday life. Munakata’s, Sugaï’s, and Yamada’s distinct practices highlight the multifaceted history of Japanese artmaking, and contribute to international narratives of modern and contemporary art.
Bechtler 2023-2024 Exhibition Season – 2
Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler: Flora
On View September 23, 2023 – January 21, 2024
Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler: Flora features the Swiss American duo’s multimedia project based on their discoveries about the previously unknown American artist Flora Mayo. Hubbard / Birchler have been working collaboratively since 1990, employing video, sound, photography, and other mediums to explore connections between history, memory, social relationships, and narratives both factual and imagined. Flora and the accompanying work Bust (both 2017) spotlight the life of Flora Mayo, who in the 1920s studied alongside Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, and with whom she had a romantic relationship. While Giacometti is one of the most revered artists of the 20th century, Mayo’s practice had been relegated to a footnote in Giacometti scholarship. Hubbard / Birchler reframe this story from a feminist perspective, and bring Mayo’s compelling biography to life through a hybrid form of storytelling that deftly interweaves narration, reenactment, and documentary. Flora is conceived as a conversation between Flora Mayo and her son, David Mayo. Comprising a double-sided film with a shared soundtrack, the work presents a multifaceted dialogue across place and time: between a mother and son, Mayo and Giacometti, Europe and the United States, art history and contemporary life, and between evidence and imagination. Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler: Flora is organized by the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The work premiered at the Swiss Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017, and the Bechtler’s presentation marks the first time it will be exhibited on the East Coast.
Adjacent to the exhibition, the Bechtler will also display works from the museum’s permanent collection by an international array of artists who studied or taught at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière—including Giacometti, Alexander Calder, Joan Miró, Meret Oppenheim, Germaine Richier, Kumi Sugaï, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, and Zao Wou-Ki, among others—presenting a window into the vibrant setting in which Giacometti and Mayo developed their art practices and fell in love.
Giacometti and the Artists of the Grande Chaumière
On View September 23, 2023 – January 21, 2024
Assembled from the Bechtler Museum’s permanent collection, this installation is conceived as a pendant to the exhibition Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler: Flora, and will feature work by an international array of artists who studied or taught at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris during the early 20th century. The famed art school was a gathering place for many avant-garde artists—including Alberto Giacometti and Flora Mayo—who sought to break away from academic conventions and experiment with new forms of expression. This focused exhibition invites viewers to explore a diverse range of work by artists associated with the Grande Chaumière, conveying the influences, dialogues, and creative exchange that took place between them. Artworks on display include paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by celebrated artists such as Giacometti, Alexander Calder, Joan Miró, Meret Oppenheim, Alicia Penalba, Germaine Richier, Kumi Sugaï, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, and Zao Wou-Ki, among others. The exhibition contextualizes the vibrant setting in which Giacometti and Mayo developed their art practices and fell in love, and provides viewers a window into the rich artistic landscape of the time.
Eduardo Chillida: 100 Years
On View December 9, 2023 – April 14, 2024
Eduardo Chillida: 100 Years commemorates the centenary of the influential Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida (1924– 2002). Presenting a selection of sculptures and works on paper from the Bechtler Museum’s permanent collection, this intimate exhibition offers a focused look at the artist’s pioneering and varied practice. Renowned for his monumental sculptures, Chillida also created domestically-scaled sculptures, drawings, collages, and prints, examples of which will be on view. Together these works illustrate the great influence that Chillida’s upbringing in the Basque region of Spain and his early training in architecture had on his unique artistic vision, and demonstrate his enduring exploration of space, light, form, and material.
Bechtler 2023-2024 Exhibition Season – 3
Alyson Shotz: Coalescence
On View December 9, 2023 – August 9, 2024
Blurring the boundaries between art and science, American artist Alyson Shotz (born 1964) is widely acclaimed for her sculptures and installations that use synthetic materials such as glass, mirrors, plastic, and stainless steel to harness intangible forces of the natural world like gravity, space, and light. This single-work installation will spotlight Shotz’s Coalescence (2006), on loan to the Bechtler Museum from the Bank of America Collection. A dazzling sculpture made of glass beads and wire that hangs from the ceiling, Coalescence resembles a hovering cloud, a massive spider web glistening with morning dew, or a cluster of atoms magnified to monumental scale. Its open form challenges traditional notions of sculpture as grounded, solid, or weighty, and reveals Shotz’s abiding interest in perception: calling attention to the relationship between an artwork, the viewer, and the space they share, Coalescence changes in appearance as visitors move around it and as the natural sunlight filtering through the Bechtler’s airy lobby fluctuates throughout the day.
Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson: Infinite Space, Sublime Horizons
On View February 17 – June 2, 2024
Born and raised in Reykjavik, Iceland, Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson (born 1963) has spent the last 30 years in Cleveland, Ohio, where she has developed a unique practice that melds the disciplines of painting, weaving, and drawing, creating an innovative and labor-intensive body of work that blurs the boundaries between abstraction and representation, and between fine art and craft. Based on Iceland's captivating landscape and skies, her work is deeply rooted in environmental subjects and concerns while also contributing to art historical discourses on landscape painting and postwar abstraction. Organized by the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University, this exhibition features 45 works of art—many of which have never been exhibited—including large-scale paintings created on a loom and more intimate watercolors and drawings. Hildur Ásgeirsdóttir Jónsson: Infinite Space, Sublime Horizons is the artist's first solo museum exhibition in the U.S. in nearly a decade, and her first monographic show in the Southeast.
Current Exhibitions On View
Europe in the Age of Picasso, 1900–1973
On View Through August 27, 2023
Drawn from the Bechtler Museum’s permanent collection and organized in honor of the 50th anniversary of Pablo Picasso’s death, Europe in the Age of Picasso, 1900–1973, features 125 works by over 50 artists who were active in Europe alongside Picasso and shared his dedication to innovation and experimentation. A quick survey of the seven decades represented in the exhibition reveals the dramatic changes that defined the period. At the outset of the century, Edgar Degas continued to create his signature Impressionist pastels capturing fleeting sensations of physicality and movement. In 1918, Le Corbusier developed a structured visual vocabulary based on streamlined, machine-like forms.
Dada and Surrealist artist Max Ernst conversely embraced irreverence and irrationality over order and reason. From the 1930s through the 1960s, Barbara Hepworth made significant advancements in abstract sculpture. After the Second World War, Art Informel artists Karel Appel, Hans Hartung, and Pierre Soulages painted exuberant compositions using bold colors and frenzied lines. In the 1960s and 1970s, Daniel Spoerri and Dieter Roth created assemblages out of everyday objects and foods; Niki de Saint Phalle celebrated the female form in vibrant sculptures, paintings, and reliefs; and Victor Vasarely experimented with geometry and color to produce mind-bending optical effects. The trove of 20th- century European art on view from the Bechtler’s collection provides a dynamic context for the art world that Picasso inhabited and profoundly impacted.
Bechtler 2023-2024 Exhibition Season – 4
Yasumasa Morimura: Egó Sympósion
On View Through August 27, 2023
Over the past forty years, Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura—one of the most acclaimed contemporary photographers of the late 20th century—has explored constructions of identity and representation in his photography, film, and performance work. Yasumasa Morimura: Egó Sympósion presents the artist’s first feature-length film, in which he stars as eleven artists celebrated for their self-portraits—in order of appearance: Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Diego Velázquez, Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Vincent Van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol, and, finally, himself. This exhibition marks the second U.S. art museum screening of Morimura’s 74-minute film since its premiere at the Japan Society in New York in 2018. Also on display is the photograph An Inner Dialogue with Frida Kahlo (Gift 2) (2001), a prime example of Morimura’s signature work on loan from the Collection of Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College.
