Art News

Winter in art from the Renaissance to Impressionism opens at Kunsthaus Zurich

ZURICH.- From 10 February to 29 April 2012 the Kunsthaus Zürich is staging a thematic exhibition focusing on depictions of winter from the Renaissance to Impressionism. Entitled ‘Winter Tales,’ it includes some 120 works by artists such Pieter Brueghel the Younger, Jacob van Ruisdael, Francisco de Goya, Kazimir Malevich, Claude Monet, Edvard Munch and many other European painters. For the first time in a Swiss art museum, it brings together the hand-carved, opulently gilded sleighs of Austria’s ruling family and sumptuous Flemish tapestries. The creation myths of most great civilizations generally agree that winter came into the world as a punishment and a plague. Until the Middle Ages, its arrival imperilled food supplies and health in a predominantly agrarian society that was at the mercy of nature. Since then, social and technological progress have combined to progressively mitigate winter’s impact