Glaciers & rapids. Drawn Switzerland around 1800

From the damp, cool cave out onto the summery alpine pasture, over narrow bridges, past curious farmers' wives to the waterfalls cascading down the valley, in whose mist rainbows sometimes form.

The exhibition invites you on a journey through the most impressive landscapes and the most remote corners of Switzerland. At the same time, it is a journey through time: The drawings you can enjoy here were all created around 1800, when they played a key role in shaping the image of "beautiful Switzerland" - both at home and abroad.
abroad - that still has an impact today.

This painted world unfolds between two opposing poles. On the one hand, there are sublime depictions of nature of unearthly clarity: mountain massifs, glacier tongues and rugged rock faces. On the other hand, we encounter intimate, lifelike scenes and everyday objects: young peasants poking stones
in Appenzell, woven straw baskets, milk buckets and pitchforks or a mother sitting with her children in front of the house in the evening while her father smokes his pipe in the background.

From the extensive and top-class collection of over 4,000 drawings by Swiss artists in the ETH Zurich Graphic Art Collection - including such illustrious names as Caspar Wolf, Johann Ludwig Aberli and Sigmund Freudenberger - a selection has been made for this exhibition that will appeal to both the eye of Swiss enthusiasts and the eye of the public.
This selection appeals to the eye of Swiss enthusiasts as well as to those who enjoy the mastery of the art of drawing around 1800.

Curated by Susanne Pollack, Graphische Sammlung ETH Zürich and Linda Vogel, Kunsthistorisches Institut der Universität Zürich.


Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.