Shlomit Miky Dan defines hereslf as one of hte international nomad tribe, the ever-moving international community, an enriching experience that continues to challenge her curiosity and learning. She studied Art History in Boston and Brussels, and has earned an MA in International Relatoins in Geneva, Switzerland. She published interviews with writers, artists, and human rights’ committed persons, reports on internatonal relations events and non fiction narratives. These days she lives in Switzerland.

Sunday, October 22, 2023

A Painter Ode To Lago Maggiore

By Shlomit Miky Dan

Thomas Huber Lac Exhibition 08.10.2023-28.01.2023, “Thomas Huber, Lago Maggiore” © MASI Lugano, Photo: Shlomit Dan

Thomas Huber in a guided tour, 05 October 2023, tôt le matin, 2022, 180 x 33 cm, Private Collection, “Thomas Huber, Lago Maggiore” © MASI Lugano, Photo: Shlomit Dan

Thomas Huber, the Swiss Painter, born in Zürich, 1955, has been painting Lago Maggiore scenery, inspired by the views from his house near Cannobio, a small Swiss village close to the Italian border, where he lives since 2021.

Thomas Huber Lago Maggiore 08.10.2023–28.01.2024 exhibition present 70 oil and watercolor works.

In a press conference led by the artist tour of the exhibition, he shared with us his thoughts about his artistic explorations.

The horizontal, large scale oil on canvases depict the lake landscapes, inviting the viewer to join a meditative mise-en-scene.

In what seems a love affair of a homecoming painter, who moved from Germany’s plane, unchanging terrains to a lake embraced by mountains, Thomas Huber has been painting the lake, its Swiss northern rugged mountain tops and the southern softer Swiss /Italian ranges. From sunrise to sunset in alternating seasons, enhanced by shifting sources of light, he creates a visual documented journal. The canvases reflect the artist fascination by the arresting landscapes he knows well, interpreted with a skillful mastery.

The repainted lake scenes reminisce Claude Monet’s paintings of Rouen Cathedral more than thirty views, in 1892-93. Cluade Monet Rouen Cathedral,

Clear, outlined mountains, lakes and sky share equal values on the canvases.

The lake surfaces stand out in their varied blue tones. Their still, smooth, mirror-like surfaces evoke Scandinavian icy lakes, while the diagonal mountains cuntours that slant down to the lake create motion. These effects invoke a rhythmical harmony, partitions-like in Nature’s musical composition. The balanced juxtapositioning masses keep each element character,. They enhance the paintings with a fresh, kinetic energy, which is one of the precursor themes in Thomas Huber’s Lago Maggiore exhibition. The smaller dimensions water color painting are presented in a ‘room within a room’ present similar views, executed in a lighter, whimsical brush strokes.

1.1.22, 2022, Oil on Canvas, 50 x 100 cm, Private Collection, “Thomas Huber, Lago Maggiore” © MASI Lugano, Photo: Shlomit Dan

The painting 1.1.22, 2022, displays a festive lake at night. The blue palette scene is dotted with tiny jewel-like light spots, in a playful manifestation. The sprakling lights are reflected in the lake in thin, vertical splashes that jazz-up the nocturnal setting. ‘Nature is an artist, reflecting itself in the water’ Thomas Huber said.

The overall effect is enigmatic. It invites the viewer to get absorbed in the scenery. The dialog between he viewer and the painting is already taking place.

Evening, 2023, 180 x 130 cm, Private Collection, “Thomas Huber, Lago Maggiore” © MASI Lugano

The Evening painting directs the view to the diminishing light in the horizon, then draws it back to its faded reflection on the water, generating a movement, and a sensation that we are witnessing a live sunset in situ.

April 1, 2022, 120 x180 cm, Oil on Canvas, Private Collection, “Thomas Huber, Lago Maggiore” © MASI, Lugano, Photo: Shlomit Dan.

Some of the paintings, such as April 1, 2022, bring to mind Georgia O’Keeffe’s sun lit deserts paintings, Georgia O’Keefee . G Okeefee in Pompidou Center

‘When I am looking at it now, I see some similarities to her paintings that I saw in Pompidou Center in Paris’ Thomas Huber told us when we passed by two paintings that skirt abstract.

A few paintings mark Huber’s stylistic departure, presenting compositions with a multitude of objects, in an architectural mise en abyme-the placing of an image within itself in the painting, thus creating a story within a story. They remind the paintings of Giorgio De Chirico in their intriguing ambiguity of indoor and outdoor, inspiring a strange enigmatic aura of solitude, as De Chirico Mobili Nelle Valle sothebys.com ,1968. De Chirico paintings are currently presented in Lugano by Gallery Repetto, https://www.repettogallery.ch/artist/giorgio-de-chirico/ 25 September – 16 December 2023.

When I asked Thomas Huber during the tour about his interest in architecture, he answered, ‘My father was an architect, my mother worked with Le Corbusier. Architecture was always present in my family’.

Thomas Huber’s uncluttered Nature scenes, in contradiction to horror vaccui-the fear of emptiness, inspire the viewer with a calm, contemplative ambience, so that the absence of humans is not missed. Or, less is so much more in Huber’s lake scenes, achieved by a painter who says he enjoys what he does, and who aims to share it with his viewers.

In Huber’s words, ‘It is the spectator who gives the painting its meaning. I wish the viewer will sit, look at the painting, contemplate, and be happy’. Because, he adds, ‘It is the spectator who gives the painting its meaning’.

The exhibition layout, which consists also of smaller scale watercolors of landscapes presented in a smaller ‘room within a room’, was organized by the MASI Ludovica Introini, in collaboration with the artist. A major part in the success of any exhibition depends on its curating. Ms. Introini clever execution allocating a adequate space between the paintings, attuned to the expansive paintings, as well as her choice of the gray tone of the background that corresponds to the paintings tonality, contribute to the overall sense of spatial harmony.

’It took us one year to prepare the exhibition, with the artist’ she told me, and ‘I am happy that I have found the right shade for the background after quite an intensive research’.

The Exhibition catalogue in Italian, French and German, titled Thomas Huber, Lago Maggiore. With texts by Barbara Alms and Thomas Huber, Edited by MASI Lugano, Skopia art contemporain, Published by DISTANZ VERLAG, distanz.de