The paintings of Albert Welti (1862 Zurich – 1912 Bern), especially his ‘Walpurgis Night’, are well known to Kunsthaus regulars. Welti, who grew up in Zurich and was educated in Munich, is undoubtedly one of the most idiosyncratic artists known to us from this era and region. In his graphic works in particular, he was strongly committed to the fantastic. The Collection of Prints and Drawings possesses a broad spectrum of the artist's graphic works: from imaginative playfulness, which he lived out in rather small commercial prints, to large-format masterpieces of the imagination, including the ‘Journey into the 20th Century’. The ‘eerily demonic streak’ that characterizes many of these sheets may be due in part to the influence of his teacher Arnold Böcklin. Yet that cannot be the only explanation. The exhibition places Welti's prints in the broader panorama of fantastic art in the period from around 1750 to 1900.

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Ill.: Albert Welti, The Journey into the 20th Century, 1899 Kunsthaus Zürich