Unseen Colour" Werner Bischof, one of the most important historical exhibitions in Europe until 2 July 23, MASI, Lugano

Unseen Colour" Werner Bischof, one of the most important historical exhibitions in Europe until 2 July 23, MASI, Lugano.

Art Calendar and also on Alethea Talks, 19 April 2023

"Unseen Colour" Werner Bischof

One of the most important historical exhibitions in Europe can be found at MASI, Lugano until 2 July 2023. A comprehensive insight into the work of Werner Bischof, the great master of 20th century photo-reportage.

Also on display are previously undiscovered images that his son Marco Bischof discovered in his father's archives.

"Werner Bischof. Unseen Colour" ©Werner Bischof Estate

Art Calendar, 19 April 2023: The Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana (MASI) in Lugano is showing the exhibition "Werner Bischof. Unseen Colour": Werner Bischof (Zurich, 1916 - Truijllo, Peru, 1954) was one of the great masters of photographic reportage of the 20th century. He was known worldwide above all for his black-and-white photo reportages.

His iconic photographs documented war and humanity

The surprising thing is the colour photos. Bishop's eldest son Marco had discovered the "hidden treasure" in his father's archive. For the first time ever, 100 digital colour prints of original negatives from the years 1939 to 1950, which were restored for the occasion, are on display at the MASI.

Did you know that Werner Bischof had already started making them at the end of the 1930s, when colour photography was almost unknown

In 2016, Marco Bischof found hundreds of 6.5 x 9 cm glass plate negatives in his father's archive that had the appearance of black and white photos. Each photo had three seemingly identical negatives. Marco discovered that they had different intensities. Each image consisted of three black and white glass negatives. And these were then converted into a colour image through a complex process.

"Werner Bischof. Unseen Colour" ©Werner Bischof Estate

The tour through the exhibition is conceived as a journey through world regions that were visited by Bischof or in which he lived. "Unseen Colour" covers the entire time frame of his career and shows alternating unpublished images taken with three cameras: a Rolleiflex, a handy Leica and a bulky Devin Tri-Color camera with a three-colour process.

The subjects of the photographs range from formal experiments in the early creative years to studio and fashion photography, from shots of post-war Europe to images from the Far East, photo reportages from the USA to his last trip to South America, where he unfortunately met with an accident.

A walk through the exhibition

Bischof began documenting post-war Europe for the renowned Swiss magazine "Du". The exhibition shows one of the photographer's most famous and controversial images: the face of a child from Roermond in the Netherlands, covered with numerous scars caused by an exploding booby trap. The colour image appeared on the cover of the May 1946 issue of "Du" and provoked outraged and angry reactions. The colour photos taken in 1946 of Berlin, Cologne and Dresden and other destroyed cities convey an atmosphere of wait-and-see stasis with their cropped images that contrast sharply with the details and colours. From the early 1940s to the early 1950s, Bischof photographed with a Rolleiflex 6x6. From the photographs taken in parts of Europe - from Sardinia to Poland - to those taken on his long trip to Asia in 1951, colour becomes a means of expressing states of mind.

Bischof is fascinated by Japan

Fascinated by the spiritual richness of the island and in search of a more profound approach, he experienced a high point of his career there. He produced the book Japon, which is also on show in the exhibition and which was awarded the Prix Nadar in 1955.

From 1953 onwards, he produced his "American photographs", taken with a handy Leica on a trip through the USA.

Bischof was also impressed by the Inca culture on his trip to Peru, which he captured with a Leica. During the trip through South America, which the photographer describes as a "great journey", his life is abruptly ended by a tragic accident in the Andes in May 1954.

Among the many unanswered questions about his work is the question of what role colour might have played in the life of such a talented photographic artist.

Read also the interview with Marco Bischof on Alethea Talks.

Werner Bischof Unseen Colour

12 February- 2 July 2023

Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana, Lugano

Location LAC

A book has also been published to accompany the exhibition

"Werner Bischof - Unseen Colour".

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