VISUAL MAPPING OF THE SOUL

THE BONN BASED FOUNDATION FOR ART AND CULTURE IS PRESENTING WORKS BY SUSAN SWARTZ IN THE MARBLE PALACE OF THE STATE RUSSIAN MUSEUM IN ST. PETERSBURG

Artist Susan Swartz in front of her artwork at the Ludwig Museum at the State Russian Museum

After Salzburg, Koblenz and Budapest, St. Petersburg is now the fourth European location in which the American artist is staging her solo exhibition "Personal Path". On view until January 29, 2018 in the State Russian Museum are 113 of her paintings.

Susan Swartz has dedicated herself to one of the timeless themes in the history of art: the ambivalent relationship between nature and painting. Steeped in the tradition of American historical landscape
painting, her pictures are all rooted in her perception of the natural world, which she abstracts in her
works, and to which she has developed a profoundly personal, even spiritual, affinity. "These
paintings", observes Alexander Borovsky in his catalogue essay, "are intended to evoke on our retinas 1 scents, noises or even the rays of sunlight shimmering through the trees. If that does not sound

altogether abstract, then this is because Swartz’s abstractions are truly extraordinary. They are closely bound to the senses, full of familiar optical, tactile and even acoustic elements." Curator Dieter Ronte has described the work of Susan Swartz as the “visual mapping of her own soul".

The exhibition is being inaugurated by the former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the new US Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman. Also scheduled to attend the inauguration is Mikhail Shvydkoy, Special representative of the President of the Russian Federation for international cooperation in culture.

With the project "Susan Swartz – Personal Path", the Foundation for Art and Culture is continuing to nurture one of its principal objectives, namely fostering intercultural dialogue, at a time and place in which the political situation serves to highlight the need for cultural bridges.

Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue featuring contributions by Alexander Borovsky (Head of the Department of Contemporary Art at the State Russian Museum), Dieter Ronte (curator of the exhibition) and Walter Smerling (Chairman of the Foundation for Art and Culture, Bonn).

courtesy of Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V. (Foundation for Art and Culture), Bonn, Germany