Malevich painted his seminal White on White a century ago. Ever since, monochrome has been seen as an iconoclastic process or a quest for the absolute, inspiring both fascination and curiosity.

The Musée des beaux-arts is marking the painting’s centenary with an exhibition exploring how monochrome painting became a vital part of the collection’s identity. From Yves Klein to Steven Parrino and Marcia Hafif, our works bear witness to several key episodes in the history of monochrome since the late 1950s. Some ten artists working across the region demonstrate the range of effects monochrome can achieve: it is virtuoso for Gygi, dextrous for Cuccu, erudite for Hentsch and Anüll, fleshy for Bianchini and Huck, ironic for Fleury, optical for Kropf, lyrical for Levi, metaphysical for Ferrand, and even combines with music and architecture for Sylvain Croci-Torti and Frédéric Gabioud.

The range of monochrome practices underlines the paradox that the minimum threshold of perceptibility in an almost uniform painting always heightens the sharpness of the viewer’s gaze.

exhibited artists

Alexandre Bianchini, Henry Codax, Andreas Christen, Sylvain Croci-Torti, Charles Cuccu, Pierre André Ferrand, Sylvie Fleury, Frédéric Gabioud, Jonathan Genkins, Christoph Gossweiler, Fabrice Gygi, Marcia Hafif, Nicole Hassler, Jérôme Hentsch, Yves Klein, Stéphane Kropf, Bertrand Lavier, Renée Levi, Matthew McCaslin, Allan McCollum, Olivier Mosset, John Nixon, Steven Parrino, Stephen Prina, Claude Rutault, Adrian Schiess, Joan Waltemath.