Marianne Eigenheer: A Lifelong Search Along the Lines
A fascinating and long-overdue study of the artist’s work spanning five decades of her diverse practice, this comprehensive and thought-provoking book provides an overview of Marianne’s oeuvre. It also creates dialogues between different periods of her work by presenting them alongside one another – many shown this way for the first time in print. From her spontaneous, gesturally abstract drawings of the 1970s, to her bolder, more defined, large-scale drawings that gained public attention at the 1980 Venice Biennale, to her lesser-known sculptural and photographic works, to the wall painting created for Kunstmuseum Basel in 2018 – this book spans the artist’s creative scope.
The characteristic linear forms that underscore Marianne’s practice come from the meditative process of drawing she developed in her lifetime, whereby she externalised her personal experiences onto paper. Marianne Eigenheer The book also features a selection of essays by a diverse group of writers that discuss and explore the different aspects of Marianne’s practice, shining a light on her work as artist, writer, curator and teacher.
Marianne Eigenheer (1945–2018, Swiss) was a renowned artist and active academic whose work has been exhibited across Europe, Australia
and the United States. As a child, Marianne’s parents had aspirations for her to become a pianist, although she wanted to become a composer. Instead, she began drawing and painting after finishing school and went to art college in Lucerne, Switzerland.
Marianne’s work was featured in Achille Bonito Oliva and Harald Szeemann’s seminal Venice Biennale exhibition Aperto ’80 in 1980, as well as in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Germany – Bonner Kunstverein, Volker Diehl, Galerie Volker Diehl, Zeppelinmuseum and Ludwig Forum fur Internationale Kunst; in the US – Holly Solomon Gallery and the Swiss Institute in New York; and at the Manege Central Exhibition Hall in St Petersberg, Russia, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) in Australia, and the Meguro Museum of Art in Tokyo, Japan. Her work has also been exhibited in Switzerland – at sic! Raum für Kunst in Lucerne, von Bartha in Basel, and at the Kunstmuseum Basel in 2018.
During her academic career, Marianne was Professor and Director of the Institute for Curatorship and Education at Edinburgh College of Art, where she was granted an honorary professorship in 2009, having worked previously at several universities and art colleges, including the University of Art and Design, Offenbach, and the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart.
