From Oct. 5, 2025 to Jan. 25, 2026, the Mendrisio Museum of Art in Mendrisio, Switzerland, will present two complementary monographic exhibitions devoted to two seminal figures in twentieth-century graphic art: Pablo Picasso and Markus Raetz. The exhibition project focuses on the art of printmaking, noting how for both artists graphic art was an area closely connected to their painting and sculpture production.
The two exhibitions aim to explore the use of ancient printmaking techniques, such as drypoint, etching and burin, revisited with a contemporary language and a focus on content. The exhibition Pablo Picasso, Master of Engraving, with works from the Gottfried Keller Foundation and Georges Bloch ’s donation , highlights the Spanish master’s technical and iconographic variety, while the itinerary on Markus Raetz presents a selection of burin engravings made between 1994 and 2017, most of which have never been seen before.
The section devoted to Pablo Picasso, curated by Barbara Paltenghi Malacrida, director of the museum, and Matthias Frehner, art historian and former director of the Kunstmuseum Bern, features more than 150 works that trace the artist’s technical and thematic development. The corpus on display comes from the collection donated to the Gottfried Keller Foundation by Georges Bloch, Picasso’s friend and a profound connoisseur of his graphic production. The display is organized by thematic nuclei that illustrate Picasso’s many engraving experiments, ranging from drypoint and etchings to linocuts, lithographs and aquatints, showing the richness and versatility of his research.
In parallel, Markus Raetz. Burin Engravings 1994-2017, curated by Francesca Bernasconi, scientific collaborator of the Mendrisio Museum of Art, and Rainer Michael Mason, author of the catalog raisonné of Raetz’s engravings, presents a corpus of more than eighty works created with the burin technique. Raetz, a Swiss artist, used the intaglio technique to develop small- and medium-format images capable of suggesting dense, continuous worlds and visions. The selection includes many previously unpublished and never exhibited works, offering an unprecedented overview of the engraving production of an artist who, although far removed from the figure of Picasso, represents an important voice in the Swiss and European art scene of the second half of the 20th century.
The arrangement of the two exhibitions at the Mendrisio Museum of Art aims to stimulate a dialogue between two different approaches and sensibilities. Picasso, the symbol of an art that revolutionized modernity through a multiplicity of languages and experimentation, and Raetz, the interpreter of a more meditative and conceptual vision, linked to a technique requiring great skill and precision. Both artists have been able to exploit the possibilities offered by engraving to expand their formal and content research, making graphic art a fundamental element of their artistic journey.
In the context of a broader reflection on engraving, the project at the Mendrisio Museum of Art aims to reaffirm the importance of an artistic discipline that, although it has ancient roots, continues to offer highly topical insights. The works of Picasso and Raetz testify to how printmaking can maintain an expressive and technical vitality capable of confronting the challenges posed by contemporaneity.
The exhibition at the Museo d’arte Mendrisio is part of a network of cultural institutions that value graphic art as an autonomous field of investigation, capable of dialoguing with painting, sculpture and other art forms. In the case of Picasso, Georges Bloch’s collection and collaboration with the Gottfried Keller Foundation allow for an in-depth exploration of lesser-known aspects of the master’s production, making a significant and articulate selection available to the public. For Raetz, the possibility of exhibiting never-before-seen engravings contributes to a more complete understanding of his work, which is often recognized primarily for sculptures and installations, but which finds an equally relevant dimension in graphic art.
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| Pablo Picasso and Markus Raetz on exhibition in Mendrisio, Switzerland: two masters of engraving compared |
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