Harumi Klossowska de Rola: Hayawan

Protestant Church, via Maistra 18, St. Moritz

Open daily, 12–⁠6pm

HAYAWAN

Harumi Klossowska de Rola is an artist and designer who creates powerful sculptural works and delicately crafted luxury jewellery inspired by the flora and fauna of the natural world. Her first encounter with a collection of precious gems at the age of seven captivated her imagination and inspired a lasting fascination with jewels and the splendour of nature. Over the years she has developed a unique and sensitive rendering of creatures great and small, often fusing the aesthetic with the functional and creating, in her words, ‘something that you can wear, or you can exhibit on a shelf’.

The exhibition brings together recent works inspired by ancient cultures and by the majesty of the wild animals that Harumi encounters in the forests that surround her home in Switzerland. From regal bronze cheetahs to twisting trees detailed with dainty birds, Hayawan pays homage to the sublime grace and form of the creatures who inhabit the earth, presenting exquisitely crafted works that remind us of the complexity and wonder of the animal kingdom.  

Among the sculptural works on display is the majestic Mafdet II, a serene cheetah cast in bronze with intricate details of twenty-four carat gold. Inspired by the Ancient Egyptian goddess of justice, this sculpture appears to to cry tears of gold, with 24 carat gilded touches animating the head. Another highlight of the exhibition is the extraordinary bench in the form of a dynamic crocodile, called Sobek, taking inspiration from the Egyptian god of the pharaohs' power, of fertility, and of military success. The work is delicately gilded with highlights of 24 carat gold, accentuating the weathered skin of the creature and underlining its associations with the divine.

The delicate beauty of plants and flora has a strong presence in the presentation alongside the animal kingdom. The slender Ceres pays homage to the Roman goddess of architecture in the form of a wheatsheaf with stems exploding outwards, reaching towards the sky. Another work, Tree with Single Bird, is an intricate example of the artist’s playful attentiveness to the natural world – the tiny bird, almost invisible at first among the twisting branches and occasional leaf, is a tribute to the songbirds that Harumi sees in the forests surrounding her home, chirping their joy at the dawn of a new morning.

Together, the works on display evoke the sacredness and beauty of the natural world. The animals of Harumi Klossowska de Rola are totemic entities which, like in shamanism, play a role as true masters capable of creating a bridge between nature and man, the visible and the invisible, the spirit and the earth.

20TH-CENTURY MASTERS

In conversation with these serene bronze creatures, the exhibition features a selection of artworks by some of the most prominent artists from the 20th century: Chagall, Fontana, Miró, Morandi, Picasso, and Twombly.  

A calming Natura Morta (1946) by Morandi offers a moment of reflection upon a humble assortment of bottles and jars, and echoes the simple grace of the Protestant Church in which it hangs. This mediative still life is contrasted by two canvases by Lucio Fontana, works from his seminal Concetto Spaziale series. These canvases showcase the artist’s seminal experiments into the infinite space of a work through the opening of its surface. Both made in 1964 – with a single slash and seven slashes respectively – the works demonstrate the potential of the tagli to open new horizons beyond the picture plane that inspired a generation of artists.

In his painting Nu rose (Pink Nude), Picasso demonstrates his unique treatment of the female form, depicting his muse and second wife, Jacqueline Roque. Also on display is Joan Miró’s lyrical abstraction, Paysage (Landscape) (1974). Distilling his perceptions into neat and deliberately minimal forms, this work characterises the restraint of the artist’s later works, reflecting his fascination with the power of emptiness and incorporating calligraphic influences from Japanese art.

Made in the same year, Cy Twombly’s Untitled (1974) exemplifies the artist’s unique expressionist style, weaving his lifelong engagement with antiquity through a revolutionary approach to form and the representation of language.

The presentation concludes with mesmerising late painting by Marc Chagall, Ane rouge au-dessous de la ville (Red donkey above the town). Painted with the retrospection of old age, the work is a testament to a lifetime, and an acceptance of the artist’s own mortality.