Curated by Elio Schenini and Christoph Doswald

The newspaper is probably an object that best characterises the spirit of modern life. From the mid-19th century, everyday life was articulated around daily newspapers and their images. Through their pages, we develop our relationship with the flow of time and world events, events that may become ever-more insignificant, until they dissolve into oblivion or, on the contrary, assert themselves as defining moments of an epoch, historical landmarks.
It is not by chance, therefore, when, amid the intertwining of art and life begun by the artistic movements at the start of the 20th century, the newspaper becomes one of the favourite subjects of linguistic experimentation, used by artists, now as then, to question reality. The artistic use of printed material, whether as subject or support, an element of composition or conceptual reference, is the basis for an extraordinary collection compiled by Annette and Peter Nobel during the final quarter of the last century. Starting from paintings, drawings and collages by representatives of Cubism, Dadaism and Surrealism - Braque, Arp, Schwitters, Miró and Giacometti - through representatives of the neo-avant-gardes of the 1960s such as de Kooning, Warhol, Beuys, Boetti, Christo and Polke, it reaches right to the present day, including some of the major representatives from the current artistic scene, including Muntadas, Kentridge, Signer and Muniz. Comprising a wide selection of works belonging to the collection, the exhibition blends social narrative, contemplative reflection, political criticism, phenomenological enquiry and ironic subversion, represents an exciting opportunity to reflect on the evolution of artistic languages from the beginning of the 20th century until today, and on the history of today’s reality.

A look at the Annette and Peter Nobel Collection
Absolutely unique, the Collection comprises 1500 works which the Nobels have collected since the 1980s. A lawyer, law professor and head of his own law firm in Zurich, which also concerns itself with jurisprudence of the media and communication, Peter Nobel, together with his wife, Annette, collect works with the press as their common denominator. The Annette and Peter Nobel Collection has been published in two volumes entitled "Press Art" (Stämpfli Verlag), edited by Christoph Doswald: the first volume was published in 2010 while the second was published in 2020 on the occasion of the exhibition at MASI, Lugano. Important and significative selections of works from the Nobel Collection were exhibited at the Centre Dürrenmatt in Neuchâtel in 2007 and again in 2010 at the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg and at the Kunstmuseum in St. Gallen.

Catalogue
The exhibition catalogue of the same name published by Edizioni Casagrande contains colour illustrations of all of the exhibited works, the critical texts of the two curators, Elio Schenini and Christoph Doswald, texts by the French philosopher, Jean Baudrillard and the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn, and a preface by the Director of the Museum, Marco Franciolli.

Audioguides available with the app smARTravel