Bancaperta               Jil Sander                 Julius Bär

Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery is pleased to inaugurate in the Stelline Refectory Meret Oppenheim greatest exhibition Italy never hosted. The famous German artist died in 1985.

Credito Valtellinese promotes this exhibition, in association with the German fashion house Jil Sander and with the Zurich group Julius Baer. Jil Sander has been promoting artistic events at the gallery for several years. Julius Baer is Credito Valtellinese partner in Bancaperta s.p.a. Bancaperta, active in the financial sector and property management sector, is supporting the exhibition too.

Martina Corgnati is attending to the exhibition dedicated to one of the most interesting and active protagonists of the European artistic scenario, from the '30s to the '80s.

The exhibition includes approximately 320 items realised between the late '20s and 1985: oils on canvas and paper, sculptures, objects, plans, as well as drawings, pastels, watercolours, etc.

The exhibition has been chronologically mounted, so that it creates a series of sections dedicated to several subjects and ideas Oppenheim developed: auto-portraits, divinities, fables and myths, sacred animals, the sky and clouds. There is also a wide, unknown section including drawings and sketches (approximately one-hundred items) dedicated to fashion, accessories, design, which shows Meret's very original creations. A wide section including photographs and painting portraits by artists and Oppenheim's friends such as Man Ray, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, Marino Marini. Meret Oppenheim was born in Berlin, in 1913. She was a versatile artist whose works range from drawings to paintings to sculptures. After she had moved to Paris, she joined the Surrealism and associated with Arp, Giacometti, Max Ernst, with whom she had a love affair, Breton, Man Ray and Duchamp. In the years before the war, from 1933 to 1937, she constantly participated in the surrealist exhibitions. Her Paris debuts of 1932 immediately showed her talent. After joining Breton's group, in fact, she realised some masterpieces, among which "Colazione in pelliccia", of 1936, a Chinese gazelle hair covered cup with plate and spoon. This work would become one of the most popular and reproduced surrealist works. The Museum of Modern Art in New York would presently acquire it. La mia governante, L'orecchio di Giacometti and more objects and drawings show her very original talent and sensibility, which tends to be magic, mythical, analogical but also ironic, clear, free from any influence and forcing. Towards the end of the '30s, she went back to Switzerland and endured a period of crisis, during which she worked very little and hardly revised her opinion about art and life.

The '50s were a fervent period, which lasted until Meret's death. Although she never lost contact with André Breton and her surrealist friends, she improved her personal style. In 1949, she married Wolfgang La Roche, who stayed with her until 1967, when he died.

Meret Oppenheim spent the last decades of her life in Bern and Carona, where she painted, made objects, designed theatre costumes and fashion designs. She held exhibitions in Basel, Paris, Milan, New York and Zurich.

In the '70s, she was awarded several prizes, among which the Basel Art Prize, in 1975. In 1982, she was invited to Documenta 7 and won the Berlin Prize. The retrospective exhibition the Berlin Kunsthalle and the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris hosted in 1984 increased the public and the critics' interest in her works.

She died in 1985, in Basel. In 1989, the Institute of Contemporary Art of London hosted an Oppenheim exhibition and some of her works were purchased by very important American Museums. In 1995, the anthological exhibition "Meret Oppenheim, traces of a suffered freedom" was hosted in Europe. Between 1996 and 1997, various American Museums, among which the Guggenheim in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach and the Joslin Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska, hosted the itinerant exhibition "Beyond the teacup".

With this exhibition, Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery is keeping on documenting the XX century art, after previous exhibitions dedicated to George Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Victor Brauner, Max Ernst and Jannis Kounellis.

The brochure, published by Skira, integrates the exhibition. It includes unpublished letters Meret wrote to several culture exponents, e.g. the surrealist Leonora Carrington, or to her relatives. These letters are extraordinarily interesting, for the artist describes in detail how she conceived very famous works, such as Colazione in Pelliccia.

The brochure includes critical essays by Martina Corgnati, Jacqueline Burckhardt, Christiane Meyer Thoss, Gianni Emilio Simonetti and a testimony by Lisa Wenger, the artist's grand-daughter. For information: Credito Valtellinese Group Gallery Tel. 02. 48008015

Public transport to the Gallery: MM Cadorna, tram 24 e 19, bus 94

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