"Beauty is a rare thing"

When Piet Mondrian in 1917 first created works that were completely free from reference to the visible world, and were instead pure and fully autonomous colour-form-arrangements, he called them “Composition with Colour Planes" – this could also be the title of our exhibition. It covers works from the past hundred years, from the broad and varied field of geometric abstraction, from early classical modernism, through to American colour field painting and the free use of geometry in contemporary art. The search for balance and harmony, for equilibrium and equivalence often guides the approaches of these artists, and the realisation of balanced opposites can manifest itself in a variety of ways: in colour forms on canvas, but also in heavy steel plates that support and hold each other in equilibrium. Works from the museum’s collection enter into a dialogue with works from the Kemp Collection, which was donated to the museum in 2011. This is a very personal “Director’s Choice” presentation, with the outgoing general director Beat Wismer bidding farewell to the museum collection, and it is also a tribute to Willi Kemp, a major collector and generous patron of the museum, who celebrates his 90th birthday in April.