Personal Path, St Petersburg
November 27, 2017 to January 28, 2018
Personal Path at the Ludwig Museum at the State Museum in St. Petersburg was the first show in Russia for artist Susan Swartz. More than 100 paintings from the early 2000s through to 2017 were included in the exhibition.
In 2014, Swartz attended the Sochi Winter Olympics in Russia, absorbing the grandeur of her surroundings to gain inspiration for her paintings. “I came away with a stronger and more intense interpretation for my following paintings, accelerating me into more aggressive and abstract interpretations of my environment,” Swartz commented. “It is always amazing to me how these experiences jolt my consciousness and take me into expanding interpretations of nature.”
In the forward to the exhibition catalogue for Personal Path, Russian art critic Alexander Borovsky described the significance of Swartz’s artwork: “The paintings transform and combine the experience of the artist’s presence in nature, of personal contact with it –– both of the sublime poetic variety, and of the everyday, almost automatic, tactile kind.” Swartz challenges the viewer to reflect upon the ever-shifting dimensionality of human existence.
Dr. Dieter Ronte curated the exhibition with the assistance of esteemed Russian art critic, Alexander Borovsky, and the Foundation for Art and Culture Bonn.
Read the foreward by Alexander Borovsky.
Jon Huntsman, Former US Ambassador to Russia; Susan Swartz; Gerhard Schroder, Former Chancellor of Germany; Mikhail Shvydkoy, Rusian Culture Minister.
Press at the opening of Personal Path.
Interview on Good Morning St. Petersburg with Nicolas Iljine, Advisor to the General Director of the State Hermitage Museum.