René Burri was born in 1933 and died in 2014 in Zurich, Switzerland. Throughout his life, he was on the front line of global history. He joined Magnum Photos in 1955, becoming one of its members in 1959. Over the course of his career spanning almost sixty years, he travelled to Europe, the Middle East, North, Central and South America, Japan and China, recording with lucidity and acuity most of the momentous events of the second half of the 2Oth century. Numerous influential people were also captured by his lens including Picasso, Le Corbusier, Niemeyer, Barragan, Giacometti and Tinguely. In 1963, he produced his iconic portrait of “Che au cigare” (Che with Cigar), which brought him to the attention of the public.
From January to May 2020, curated by Marc Donnadieu and Mélanie Bétrisey, the institution has scheduled a new retrospective of his life’s work entitled René Burri, Explosions of Sight. The bonds between René Burri and the Musée de l’Elysée are strong, and anchored in the institution’s history. In 1985, when it was opened as a “museum for photography”, Burri attended for his friend Charles-Henri Favrod. Two years later, his photographic project “Les Ruines du futur” the Ruins of the Future) was presented. In 2004, the museum hosted his first retrospective. In 2013, Burri decided to set up a foundation in his name at the Musée de l’Elysée.
This new exhibition is the culmination of diligent research and studies carried out by the Musée de l’Elysée teams since 2013 on the entire René Burri collection in family archives and the Magnum Photos archives in Paris and New York. It aims to offer a new perspective on alt Burri’s myriad creative activities throughout his life. It reveals a more personal and secret side to one of the most influential photojournalists of our time with a great many often previously unpublished documents: contact sheets, study prints, films, models for books, exhibition projects, notebooks, collages, watercolours, drawings, etc.
Based on a long, chronological “Lifeline” Reading visitors through the nine rooms of the Musée de I’EIysée’s two exhibition levels, this project develops twelve “Focal Points”, each showcasing a decisive element of Burri’s creative process in the broadest sense of the term: Cinema; Structures; Myself and the Others; Che; China; Television; Magnum; Book; One World; Colour; Collages; Drawings. In this exhibition, René Burri is shown to be modem and inventive, committed and facetious, curious and generous, unifying and a mentor, a rebel and poet, impassioned and fascinating and above all, particularly explosive!
Satellite events
Guided tour in the presence of Mélanie Bétrisey, curator and head of the Foundation René Burri Fund and CIotiIde-Blanc-Burri, René Burri’s wife: January 30, 2020
Guided tour in the presence of Marc Donnadieu, curator: February 1, 2020
Guided tour in the presence of Mélanie Bétrisey, curator and head of the Foundation René Burri: March 7, 2020
Guided tour with Stephan Holenstein, mediator: April 4, 2020
Guided tour in the presence of Marc Donnadieu, curator: May 2, 2020
Useful information
René Burri, Explosions of Sight
From January 29 to May 3, 2020
Opening: Tuesday, January 28, 2020
Elysée Museum Avenue de l’Elysée 18 CH – 1006 Lausanne
Open Tuesday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Fiber entry
More information on: http://www.eIysee.ch and [email protected]
Information
Musée de l'Elysée
Avenue de l'Elysée 18, 1006 Lausanne, Switzerland
January 29, 2020 to May 03, 2020
