Wolfgang Laib – Touching the Essential

As part of the ReCollect! series, the works of Wolfgang Laib are brought into dialogue with masterpieces from the Kunsthaus Zürich Collection. Since the late 1970s, Laib has created radically reduced, quietly powerful works using pollen, beeswax, milk, rice and stone.

Touching the Essential

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CHF 24.–/17.–* including access to the entire collection.
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Laib’s works enter into a transhistorical dialogue with around 30 pieces from the Collection – from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Among the artists featured are the circle of Fra Angelico, Matteo di Giovanni, Philippe de Champaigne, Claude Monet, Ferdinand Hodler, Alberto Giacometti, Constantin Brancusi, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, Verena Loewensberg, Piet Mondrian, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Robert Ryman, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Lee Ufan.

Some 50 key works convey Laib’s artistic vocabulary: a large-scale pollen work, a Brahmanda (egg-shaped stone sculpture), Milkstone, Ziggurat, a walk-through wax room, rice houses, a lacquer stair, and other sculptures, drawings and photographs. Complementing these are formative works of Asian art, particularly from India – including a major loan from the Museum Rietberg: an important Jain marble statue of Jina Rishabha.

Laib__Reishaus_1993_94 — Wolfgang Laib, Rice House, 1993/1994, Collection Cristina and Thomas Bechtler © Wolfgang Laib

Laib__Monet_Claude — Claude Monet, Meule au soleil, 1891, Kunsthaus Zürich, Purchased with funds from the Otto Meister Bequest, 1969

Medien Download Foto_Laib — Wolfgang Laib sieving hazelnut pollen, 2013, Installation at the Museum of Modern Art, New York © Wolfgang Laib

Laib__Rothko_Mark__1971_0005__R_2489 — Mark Rothko, Untitled (White, Black, Grays on Maroon), 1963, Kunsthaus Zürich, 1971, © 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / 2025, ProLitteris, Zurich*

Laib__06 Zikkurat, 2000 — Wolfgang Laib, Ziggurat, 2000, Installation at the Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Toyota City, Japan, © Wolfgang Laib

Laib_Wolfgang_49_Grab — Wolfgang Laib, Tomb near Badami, South India, 2001, Private collection, © Wolfgang Laib

VGL_Beltz_7 — Artist unknown, Jina Rishabha India, Rajasthan, Chandravati, 11th/12th century, Rietberg Museum, Eduard von der Heydt Collection Photo: Rainer Wolfsberger, Rietberg Museum

Laib__04c Brahmanda, Atelier des Künstlers, Südindien — Wolfgang Laib, Brahmanda, undated, soot Artist’s studio, South India © Wolfgang Laib

Laib__Kandinsky_Wassily — Wassily Kandinsky, Schwarzer Fleck, 1921, Kunsthaus Zürich, 1947

The exhibition on the 1st floor of the Müller building is curated by Laib himself in collaboration with Senior Curator Collection Philippe Büttner. Their long-standing partnership, first evident in a major retrospective at the Fondation Beyeler in 2005, continues here in a dialogue spanning seven centuries of art.