In the Cabinet: Mili Jäggi. Gouaches and Drawings
In 1990, the then conservator of the Paul Klee Foundation, Josef Helfenstein, presented an exhibition of works by the so far unknown Mili Jäggi (1931-2005) in the Museum of Fine Arts Bern, showing her idiosyncratic works to the public for the first time. In her will, as an expression of gratitude, Jäggi bequeathed a group of works to the museum. We were permitted to select these from her estate after her death in 2005. Together with the works bought for the first exhibition in 1990, we are now showing these important new acquisitions as a posthumous homage to the Bernese artist.
Although she had been active artistically since her youth in addition to her profession as graphic artist and restorer, Mili Jäggi did not develop her own visual language in large-format gouaches until 1977-78. In a process lasting several months, sometimes years, she worked over irregularly cut strips of rough packing paper again and again with brushes, cloths and sponges until she was satisfied with the result - sometimes this process led to the disintegration of the material being worked on. In their meditative effect, the vibrant, sometimes quietly floating spaces of colour are very reminiscent of the paintings of Mark Rothko, even though they have been created based on quite different premises and are executed in different media.
In the abstract resonance of colour, the artist sought to attain something equivalent to her experiences, to what she has seen and lived through. For the realization of the colours she was searching for she availed herself of a kind of collection of various everyday objects: stones, fabrics and photographs from newspapers, catalogues or art books. The artist worked painstakingly towards incorporating the different colours. She began with red, brown and yellow tones and only in later years felt her way towards green and blue.
In their size and proportion, the gouaches awaken associations to human bodies on which the vicissitudes of life have left traces in the form of cracks and other signs of wear and tear. There is a dynamic contrast between the seemingly immaterial colour surfaces, appearing luminous from within, and the fragile, corporeal materiality of the base material which is expressed particularly in the intense working over of the edges of the pictures.
