Hosting the Museum of Fine Arts Bern to visit Oslo … Giacometti, Hodler, Klee… Modern Masters from Switzerland

The Museum of Fine Arts Bern has a substantial collection of both Swiss and foreign art, and the exhibition features 80 highlights of 28 Swiss artists featured in this collection. In addition to several of Paul Klee's paintings, the works of Swiss masters such as Ferdinand Hodler, Alberto Giacometti and Arnold Böcklin will be on display. Prior to the opening date the press are welcome to view the exhibition in advance on Wednesday 28 or Thursday 29 September. Please register with Curator Vibeke Waallann Hansen by calling +47 21 98 21 21, or mobile phone no. +47 481 09 198. The exhibition will be open to the public on Friday 30 September and will remain open until 8 January 2012.

The exhibition focuses on modern Swiss art, covering a period of almost 100 years - ranging from Arnold Böcklin's Symbolist work, Battle of the Centaurs (1872), to Max Bill's concrete- abstract Four Double Colours (1967). The exhibition's highlights include the works of Paul Klee, Alberto Giacometti, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Max Bill, Félix Vallotton and Ferdinand Hodler.

Art historical themes featured in the exhibition will be Realism, Symbolism, Surrealism, Outsider Art and Swiss Concrete Art. From the end of the 1800s, and particularly during the first half of the 20 th century, a number of Swiss artists made their mark on the international scene. Contemporary Swiss art history has been influenced in particular by movements such as Symbolism, Surrealism and Concrete Art.

Arnold Böcklin and Ferdinand Hodler are both important names in the world of European Symbolism. Holder is often compared with Edvard Munch, and his art is represented by both one of his main Symbolist works, The Day (1899), and one of his most famous motives deriving from his more Expressionist phase, The Woodcutter (1910).

During the first few decades of the 20th century many artists emigrated to Switzerland and some of these contributed towards the country's rich and diverse art scene. One of these was the Die Brücke artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), who greatly inspired Swiss expressionists such as Albert Müller and Hermann Scherer.

With its representative selection of eighty works, this exhibition will provide the public with an excellent introduction to the diverse and distinctive works of Swiss artists, ranging from 1870 to the middle of the 1960s.

The exhibition is a collaborative project between the Museum of Fine Arts Bern, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich and the National Museum of Art.