. . . coming to terms with death or with life is what art is all about.

Marcel van Eeden

K. M. Wiegand: Life and Work, Marcel van Eeden’s monumental cycle of drawings, was the discovery of the fourth Berlin Biennale in 2006. In 150 works drawn in his favored medium of Nero pencil, the Dutch artist, who was born in The Hague in 1965, traces the life of K. M. Wiegand, a historically documented botanist. Using an adamant visual language that is reminiscent of film noir, he created a fictive biography that meticulously traces Wiegand’s life from a bodyguard to a hero of war and dandy to an acclaimed scientist and artist. Using this biography as a starting point, Van Eeden developed a cosmos of fictive biographical connections and private encounters with figures such as Oswald Sollmann, Matheus Boryna, and Thomas Keller. In his series and large-format drawings, Van Eeden investigates historical events that date from before his birth, over the years creating a monumental artistic project that links his own existence with the flow of time—resulting in the paradoxical coupling of romantic personalization and melancholic distance.

In The Villa, created for the Kunst Museum Winterthur, the artist examines the history of Villa Flora including the famous collector couple Hedy and Arthur Hahnloser and connects it with his own artistic universe.

The oeuvre of Marcel van Eeden, who works between The Hague, Zurich, and Karlsruhe, has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad. In the summer of 2023, he was awarded the Hans-Thoma-Preis, the art prize of Baden-Württemberg in Germany.

Curator: Konrad Bitterli