The large spring exhibition aims to celebrate the friendship and bond between two protagonists of the Swiss art scene between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Ferdinand Hodler – Filippo Franzoni of the Museo d'arte della Svizzera italiana. For the occasion, an important selection of paintings by Filippo Franzoni (Locarno, 1857 – Mendrisio, 1911), will be juxtaposed, in an unprecedented dialogue, with works that are also less well-known to the general public by Ferdinand Hodler (Bern, 1853–Geneva, 1918), coming from the most important public and private Swiss collections. Points of convergence and divergence between the two artists will be highlighted in a fascinating comparison of approximately 80 works that are concentrated in the period between 1870 and 1910. Initially moving in different cultural spheres - the Geneva environment for Hodler and the Lombard-Milan one for Franzoni - the careers of the two artists met in the nascent Swiss art scene, where both actively participated in juries and exhibitions of national and international importance. At the same time, several works reveal a common attraction towards similar landscape views and atmospheric suggestions (LAC headquarters, from 13 April 2025 to 10 August 2025).
Digital technology and traditional painting techniques merge in the work of one of the most interesting voices of the contemporary Swiss scene, Louisa Gagliardi (1989, Sion, Switzerland), whose MASI will host the first exhibition in a Swiss museum: “Louisa Gagliardi: Many Moons” (in the cover photo). For the occasion, the artist will create a new series of paintings and sculptures that will be exhibited in a path developed specifically for the underground space of the LAC. Drawing on the history of art, cinema, advertising and personal experiences, Gagliardi creates compositions full of unexpected details, capable of evoking contrasting emotions between the familiar and the strange. Placing herself in the wake of artistic currents such as surrealism, metaphysics and magical realism, the artist develops a fascinating imagery, with which she becomes the spokesperson of her generation and of the profound change that characterizes the post-internet era in which we live. The project also includes recent works, which touch on themes dear to Louisa Gagliardi: among these the relationship with nature and urban space, the perception of the domestic sphere and interpersonal relationships (LAC headquarters, from 16 February 2025 to 20 July 2025).
The autumn season continues with rediscoveries and new perspectives on Swiss personalities who have had significant influences on the international art scene. More than twenty years after the last exhibition that presented their work, the MASI is dedicating a large retrospective to Richard Paul Lohse (Zurich, 1902 – 1988). The artist's career, one of the main exponents of international concretism, will be reconstructed through over 80 paintings spanning the four fundamental decades of his career, from the XNUMXs to his death. The exhibition will reveal the historical contingencies, social utopias and the fascination of colour that lie behind the rigour of Lohse's works (LAC headquarters, from 7 September 2025 to 11 January 2026).
A happy chapter of the most recent Ticino and international artistic history will instead be explored, for the first time, by the exhibition “Carona Paradise Lost 1968-1978: David Weiss and the Artists of Casa Aprile”. The project pays homage to the lively and dynamic artistic and literary community that flourished in Carona during the decade 1968-1978, around the Casa Aprile. This special place, owned by the artist Meret Oppenheim, became an epicenter of intense cultural and creative exchanges. The utopian dreams and the profound artistic vitality of that period will be recalled, in the exhibition, in the light of the work of the artist David Weiss (Zurich, 1946 – 2012) and his circle of friends, artists, who made Carona a center of artistic exploration and innovation. The experimental and collaborative spirit of that particular moment is conveyed by a rare selection of drawings, original sketches, personal letters, photographs and sound recordings (LAC headquarters, from 28 September 2025 to 1 February 2026).
In continuity with the MASI program, which in recent years has carried out work of investigation and rediscovery of precious artist archives, Palazzo Reali will host an exhibition on the work of Eugenio Schmidhauser (Seon, 1876 – Astano, 1952). The first exhibition dedicated to the Swiss photographer by a museum institution, “Eugenio Schmidhauser – Beyond Malcantone” highlights the work of an artist who strongly shaped the imagery of Ticino at the beginning of the century, helping to promote tourism in the region in innovative ways. Thanks to the collaboration with the State Archives of the Canton of Ticino, the exhibition presents around 90 photographic works, including new prints and vintage prints: a vast documentation, from which Schmidhauser's intimate relationship with the landscapes, villages and inhabitants of the area, particularly Malcantone, emerges. The exhibition also includes an unpublished group of artistic photographs, which reveal unknown and highly valuable aspects of his work (Palazzo Reali, from March 16, 2025 to October 12, 2025).
The 2025 program is integrated by the presentation of the MASI collections in the exhibition “Feeling and Observation. Art in Ticino 1850-1950” at the LAC headquarters. Enriched by some important works on loan, the exhibition aims to offer a vision of how art in Ticino – from the foundation of the federal state in 1848 to the end of the Second World War – has dynamically evolved in its specific cultural context, and to show which influences, coming from the South and the North, have established themselves in the region.
