Image: Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern
Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern is presenting ‘Anne Loch. Malerei: Na und?’ through 20 September 2026, offering one of the most substantial recent looks at the German artist’s work in Switzerland. The exhibition brings together around 70 to 80 works, according to the museum’s exhibition and newsletter materials, and focuses on the large-format paintings for which Loch became known.
Anne Loch (1946–2014) lived partly in Switzerland from the 1980s onward, and the museum describes her practice as one that played with the conventions of representation while probing the limits of painting. The exhibition text says she created a quiet tension in monumental images of mountains, flowers, animals and insects. What may initially appear idyllic or even clichéd, the museum adds, gives way on closer viewing to an image language that resists simple description.
According to Zentrum Paul Klee, the show traces Loch’s engagement with painting through the dissolution of motifs and the shifting relationship between figuration and abstraction. The institution says that the boundaries between painting and drawing, and between reality and dream, become permeable in these works. Line, colour and surface are placed at the foreground, along with a search for the right proportions among those basic elements of painting.
The museum’s newsletter underscores the scale of Loch’s production and the physical ambition of the exhibition. It cites a body of around 1,400 paintings, together with numerous paper and photographic works, created over a career spanning nearly four decades. The newsletter also describes the current presentation as the second major solo exhibition devoted to the artist in Switzerland.
Short examples in the newsletter give a sense of the scale involved: a flock of sheep extending across 3.5 metres, a butterfly on a canvas nearly one metre high, the inside of a peony blossom, and the head of a raven enlarged to more than two metres. These works are cited as part of a broader body in which monumentality is not only a question of size but also of the sweep of the oeuvre itself.
The exhibition is curated by Amélie Joller. Zentrum Paul Klee is also offering a set of public programmes around the show, including guided tours on Saturdays at 15:00 and Sundays at 13:30, a lunchtime tour on selected Tuesdays at 12:30, and an English exhibition tour on 23 August 2026 at 15:00. A related event, ‘Kunst und Religion im Dialog’, is scheduled for 16 August 2026 at 15:00, with Gaby Knoch-Mund and Dominik Imhof in conversation in the exhibition. The venue lists the exhibition dates as 18 July to 20 September 2026, while the exhibition page itself gives the run as 18 July 2026 to 20 September 2026.
