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Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn. Deep Knowledge
ESE2023-02
The Eranos Foundation is pleased to inform about the prestigious exhibition Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn. Tiefes Wissen ["Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn. Deep Knowledge"], curated by Yasmin Afshar, at the Kunsthalle Mainz, June 30-October 1, 2023; the opening is scheduled on June 29 at 7pm. This is the first monographic exhibition dedicated to the pictorial works of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (1881-1962), the founder of Eranos. The exhibition, which also include artworks by contemporary artists such as Monia Ben Hamouda, Kerstin Brätsch, Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser), Mountain River Jump!, and Sriwhana Spong, follows previous group exhibitions promoted by the Trussardi Foundation at the Palazzo Reale in Milan 2015, the New Museum in New York in 2016, the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2021, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao in 2021-2022, documented in their respective Catalogs. This year, the Museum of Modern Art in the Rhineland city of Mainz devote its wonderful exhibition spaces, for the first time, to an exhibition entirely dedicated to the various periods of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn's painting production, the subject of increasing interest from both the art world and scientific research.
We live in a time when new directions are being defined. This rethinking also involves a different way of looking at the past. In art, for example, works by artists previously marginalized because of their socio-cultural context, gender, or ethnicity are slowly coming to light. As outsider art, crafts, ritual artifacts, or research practices, such artistic expressions have not yet found their place in the general art discourse. Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn (born 1881 in London, United Kingdom; died 1962 in Ascona, Switzerland) is one such personality. Her life as a woman, researcher, and artist is fascinating. Her painterly work, from the powerful geometric and abstract "meditation plates" to the inner "visions" painted on paper, the latter also indebted to her creative and intellectual exchange with psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, are part of a practice that embraces various directions. Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn also created an extensive collection of so-called archetypes (universal forms of the human imagination) and initiated the Eranos Conferences, the famous international symposia still held today in Ascona. All her activities were an expression of the effort to harmonize esoteric, humanistic, and scientific knowledge into a unique path. The exhibition at the Kunsthalle Mainz illustrates Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn's work from a contemporary perspective. A number of contemporary artists present their latest works alongside those of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, thus building a bridge to the present. They show how Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn's questions can also be used to explore alternative models of knowledge production, transcending the boundaries of cultures, disciplines, and historical periods.
