ThoseArchitecture of the 1930s
The Geneva exhibition which avoids controversy
The museum of art and history plants the architectural decor of the 1930s by putting under the carpet the ideological ambiguities of modernity.
Architecture is sovereign in the rooms of the Museum of Art and History with the reconstruction, here, of the Villiger house imagined by Max Bill.
Dylan Perrenoud
- The new exhibition at the MAH, Museum of Art and History of Geneva, reconstructs several examples of interior architecture around the 1930s.
- Zurich and Geneva styles compare themselves in an immersive staging.
- In this demonstration entitled “And yet everything had started so well”, the controversies linked to the ideologies of the time are not discussed.
We were told … Immersion, the promise is held! The Geneva Museum of Art and History (MAH) literally makes the architecture of the 1930s enter its rooms. A single-storey villa on a scale. Another one. An interior, as if we were there, with living room and dining room. Another. Even an authentic shed by Jean Prouvé, a revolutionary modular kit, imagined as a solution to the post-war housing crisis.
The scenographers took out the magic wand, the flashback works. We would almost see elegant asserting each other in pants. Or in a tailor. You would hear almost sizzling – or swing – the radio station. Ready to breathe the hot and cold of those years, parties to experience progress, thoroughly. But … it was before, before the dropout with the bombs of a new world war. The big gap was muscular, in 1948, he inspired an observation to the architecture historian, Sigfried Giedon: “And yet, everything had started so well.”
The face-to-face between Geneva interiors (to dr.) And Zurich lights on different tastes in the same time.
Dylan Perrenoud
A summary that resonates as a title from the Geneva exhibition. But no experience of life in sight. Nor of society. The demonstration is that of external, interior, sovereign architecture in its exhibition. Who, even if it shows much more than plans and models, with a rich selection of everyday objects, furniture, photography, posters, works of art and other archives documenting this late 1920s and the beginning of the following decade, remains … an architectural exhibition. Analytical. Doctor.
More cerebral than sensitive! Even if she follows a scenario, inviting to the Genevans and the Zurich, at the heart of a little war of influence. With functional, minimalist and rational inspirations of the Bauhaus, on the German side. And more comfort and aesthetic assets for the Romans who still dare the ornamental, detaching themselves more slowly from Art Deco. Arthur Rüegg, Professor Emeritus to ETH Zurich, a figure in the history of modern architecture and well -sized, invited by the museum to trace this course, talks about culture shock. The discourse of the exhibition supports, evoking a “revolutionary face-to-face”.
Percival Pernet (1890-1977) Aluminum armchair, 1931, for a Geneva interior.
Museum of Art and History of Geneva, Photo: B. Jacot-Descombes
Visible, it is … to a very Swiss measure! So aluminum tubes do not shine only on one side of the Sarine, perhaps more practical in some, more sculptural in others. Same observation for the artistic scenes, the avant-garde echo is gauge in the nuance. More radical among the Germans. More contrasted among the Romands. But it’s true, see Rodolphe theophile walls BosshardAlice Bailly, Le Corbusier and, on others, Max Bill or His Ernistill abstract, worth all the compasses: we know which side we are on!
Werner Max Moser (1896-1970) MOSERSESSEL armchair, WB n ° 21, 1930 for a Zurich interior.
Museum of Art and History of Geneva, Photo: F. Bevilacqua
The advertising graphics will not blur the landmarks any more, we feel in the geometric precision of one as in the desire to escape the other, this breath. This possible. The new one. It is diffuse, freer in Geneva, and more dogmatic, more industry in Zurich where in the Bauhaus spirit, modernity is a global atmosphere. An art of living.
The modernity of Le Corbusier
The exhibition also comes with its great figures, those which carry and embody this slice of architectural history. Max Bill (1908-1994), his Villiger house erected in Bremgarten. And Le Corbusier (1887-1965), his building La Clarity made with his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, in Geneva between 1930 and 1932. The “glass house” is on the UNESCO World Heritage List, with 16 other sites Le Corbusier. Pride!
And… shadow. Carried by these other beams of modernity which irrigated the personality of the architect. While opinions diverge, that contrary evidence clashes, that historians debate its anti -Semitism, its links with totalitarian regimes while the Le Corbusier Foundation contextualizes, refutes and defends “the (self -proclaimed) apolitical craftsman”, the controversy exists. Long. But in the Geneva exhibition, no trace.
The building clarity under construction in Geneva, 1931
FLC / 2025, FRUITTERIS, Zurich, Photo: Frank-Henri Jullien
The choice is assumed, aware of the controversies, director Marc-Olivier Wahler validated it in response to a question asked during the press visit. “This exhibition is not centered on Le Corbusier and its activities, it sticks to a formal level. If a critical story would have had its place, we have made the choice to stay on the physical experience of an era and its architectural developments in Zurich and Geneva. ”
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Yet war appears well on the layout of the exhibition. With the icy – and just as disconcerting – appearance of two air defense machines when we have just left two households. The shock! It may be wanted, it may be seen as the mimetic experience of an entry into conflict. But without the preliminary readings, the presence of these warlike mechanics leaves in the vagueness. He persists until the end of the exhibition, time scrolls faster than a fighter plane, confuses us, and here we are in front of a Caesar compression of the 60s to evoke chaos. We who thought we were told about the 1930s …
Geneva, Museum of Art and History, until Oct 26, from MA to DI (11 a.m. to 6 p.m.), I (12 h-10 h). mahmah.ch/
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