In over sixty years of activity, Jean-Frédéric Schnyder (Basel, 1945, lives in Zug) has moved between photography, sculpture, performance and painting, maintaining a posture both secluded and central, but always remaining stubbornly faithful to a constant principle: art as a daily profession, an exercise in discipline and freedom.
The new works presented at the MASI, more than one hundred previously unpublished oil paintings that Schnyder the painter worked on continuously for two years, from 2024 to 2025. In addition to a body of work on a wide range of subjects created in the studio, the artist created a series of plein-air landscapes in various regions of Switzerland, where nature is the absolute protagonist. According to self-imposed rules, these "visual notebooks" were painted in a single day, during hours of absolute concentration that bring the pictorial experience closer to an almost visionary dimension.
This disciplined exercise in observing the world is conveyed, in the MASI exhibition, through a rigorous chronological display of the paintings, accompanied by captions drawn in pencil by the artist, indicating the date and place of execution. Schnyder carefully orchestrated the display methods, timing, and public experience of the works—a focus that today resonates more than ever as a subversive invitation to reconsider the act of looking.
Alongside the recent works, two of the artist's iconic creations are also on display at MASI: the monumental Sti//eben (Still life, 1970) and the series Bi//ige Bi/der (Economic paintings, 2000-2019), with which the exhibition opens.
The 162 small canvases in the series dot the entire walls of the first room at MASI, from floor to ceiling, and present themselves as an immediate homage to painting in its most quotidian and material dimension. They were created by Schnyder over a period of nearly twenty years, systematically collecting the rags he used to clean his brushes—hence the title "economic paintings." The works assert a frugal, humble approach to painting, in which nothing should be wasted, yet at the same time they reveal themselves as conscious remnants of other works, alluding to their presence.
For Schnyder, everything is rigorous practice, even stylistic pluralism: popular pictorialism, realism, symbolism, abstraction, pop culture references, and kitsch accents coexist effortlessly in the new works exhibited at MASI. Along the walls of the large central body of the exhibition space, studio works alternate with a series of small naturalistic paintings. As mentioned, the subject sought and captured in this cycle is Swiss nature. Schnyder's attention to landscape, albeit with a completely autonomous and personal approach, poetics, and results, draws on the long tradition of Swiss art history. In keeping with Schnyder's self-imposed limitations, the focus fell on views devoid not only of human presence, but also of its most remote and indirect traces, such as simple lampposts, railway tracks, or even felled trees: a radical and all-encompassing erasure that distinguishes this series from other previous series by the artist.
Schnyder's approach to artistic practice and method remain the same as those that brought fame to Schnyder's evenings in the 1980s and 1990s, a practice he revived twenty years later. The creation of his paintings is preceded by meticulous preparation, ranging from consulting topographical maps and postal bus schedules from his home in Zug to the locations he wants to portray, to a backpack containing the technical clothing needed for a day outdoors, and even the essentials for painting, including paints, canvas, and a portable easel. To these material elements, which the artist strives to discipline, he adds an uncontrollable one: "On his solo excursions, however, the artist has a 'traveling companion' to reckon with: time. It is time that dictates the pace and possibilities of completing the work, deciding whether the canvas must be painted quickly due to the increasing cold or whether it will be necessary to choose different colors due to suddenly changing light," observes Ludovica Introini, curator of the exhibition.
In the MASI exhibition, the small landscapes are counterpointed by the monumental still life from 1970, presented at the end of the exhibition at the museum's "point," a culminating position where the exhibition space directly interacts with the exterior. The subjects (a jug with ears of corn, bread, candle, wine, pineapple, watermelon, a plate of fruit, and a plant) were first drawn by Margret Rufener, a graphic artist and Schnyder's wife, and painted by him with oil paints.
