‘Earth Beats’ is an artists’ plea to preserve the Earth and its natural resources, born out of the urgency of the present situation. Nature, in the form of landscape painting, is firmly embedded in art history. In works from earlier centuries we generally encounter it as idyllic scenery, but since the 1970s it has been depicted with ever greater clarity as an entity threatened by human intervention and at the same time deserving of protection. What do we see in a moorland landscape by Robert Zünd that the artist himself did not? And do we appreciate the documentary value of a colour painting of a glacier from a time before photography? The exhibition explores artists’ engagement with the ‘Blue Planet’ and its vulnerability. It considers both the history of ideas and future scenarios for the sustainable use of natural resources.

On show are some 120 works by Lothar Baumgarten, Vaughn Bell, Bernd und Hilla Becher, Joseph Beuys, Ursula Biemann, Nomin Bold, Laurence Bonvin, Herbert Brandl, Julian Charrière, Edward Theodore Compton, Gustave Courbet, Tony Cragg, Buby Durini, Thomas Fearnley, Peter Fischli David Weiss, Francesca Gabbiani, Ludwig Hess, Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, Ferdinand Hodler, Anna Jermolaewa, Ruth Kaaserer, Mikhail Karikis & Uriel Orlow, Armin Linke & Giulia Bruno & Giuseppe Ielasi, Richard Long, Marcus Maeder, Maurice Maggi, Ana Mendieta, Conrad Meyer, Johann Heinrich Meyer, Otto Morach, Harald Naegeli, Walter Niedermayr, Katie Paterson, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Oliver Ressler, Germaine Richier, Ed Ruscha, David Shrigley, Jules Spinatsch, Johann Gottfried Steffan, Annelies Štrba, Thomas Struth, Vivian Suter, Félix Vallotton, Auguste Veillon, Hans Beat Wieland, Caspar Wolf, Robert Zünd.

Curators Sandra Gianfreda and Cathérine Hug have combined works from the Kunsthaus Collection with loans centred around the themes of earth, air, water and fire to create an associative itinerary that takes in not just the Chipperfield building at the Kunsthaus but also the passage adorned with art by Olafur Eliasson, before delving into the heart of the Moser complex with Joseph Beuys’s ‘Olivestone’ in the Müller building and ending in a ‘glacier room’.