‘Georges Vantongerloo. A Pioneer of Modern Art’ is a special presentation of rarely seen works by the 20th- century Belgian master. Curated by Dr. Angela Thomas Schmid, President of the Max Bill Georges Vantongerloo Stiftung, the works in the exhibition retrace Vantongerloo’s artistic evolution throughout his five- decade career. This focus exhibition is on view at Hauser & Wirth’s new space at Rämistrasse 16. The building was initially converted into offices and private viewing rooms in 2018 and is now opening as an exhibition space. The presentation at Rämistrasse 16 is complemented by a display of archival material and books on Vantongerloo and his contemporaries at Hauser & Wirth Publishers’ headquarters at Rämistrasse 5.
Georges Vantongerloo (1886–1965), born in Antwerp, Belgium, was a sculptor, painter, architect, designer and theorist. Working across a variety of mediums as a member of some of the most important avant-garde groups of the 20th century, Vantongerloo’s artistic language became a pioneering and ever-evolving force in the history of modern art. After making innovative abstract sculptures and paintings as a founding member of De Stijl, in the 1930s Vantongerloo developed concrete compositions with simplified, undulating lines that gently and playfully materialise through an interplay of colour, light and transparency. These works – intense and exuding energy – exerted great influence, especially on Latin American artists. As a leading figure in the Paris-based Cercle et Carré in 1930 and co-founder of the group Abstraction-Création in 1931, Vantongerloo associated with contemporaries like Piet Mondrian, Barbara Hepworth, Robert and Sonia Delaunay, Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Wassily Kandinsky, Josef Albers, László Moholy-Nagy and close friend Max Bill.
The exhibition at Rämistrasse 16 is a selective survey of Vantongerloo’s artistic research into colour and abstraction, and examines his influence on concrete art over a 50-year period. A selection of 15 works on paper from the estate and 2 important sculptures encapsulate his significant contribution to international modernism. Exploring the relationship between space and volume, his early horizontal-vertical compositions from the late 1920s and 1930s draw on geometry and algebraic formulae as a starting point. In works such as the study for ‘Composition dans le cône avec couleur orangé (Composition in the cone with orange colour)’ his use of the colour orange reflects a shift away from the primary palette adhered to by his elder peer Piet Mondrian. Instead, Vantongerloo chose a palette that highlights the different levels of energy inherent in different colours. He saw this as a new way of creating harmonic structures in a work of art, akin to keys and harmonic progressions in music.