Here, Jean Tinguely, kineticist and extraordinarily gifted amateur who conjured with waste materials and scrap metal, a self-proclaimed anarchist and closet militarist, encounters the golden age of this metier, the handicraft of armour-making. "Armourer" was the name for these masters and metal artists, who, from their forges in Augsburg and Nuremberg, Milan and Brescia, supplied the European armies and courts. The selection of armour from the world of chivalric culture that stretched from westernmost Europe through Turkey, India and Tibet to Japan may contain only objects from the Habsburg Empire and Switzerland, but it is an adequate reflection of a turbulent epoch of medieval history. Most of the suits of armour on display were made between 1485 and 1570 and come from the last two active medieval armouries in Europe, namely Graz in Styria, which borders on the territories of the Turkish invaders, and Solothurn. Lansquenets, "knaves" and hussars from the Graz collections are joined by a Solothurn "delegation" to evoke the battles of Morgarten, Sempach and Näfels. The transition from battlefield to tournament after 1500 during the reign of Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519), "The Last Knight", is illustrated by decorated fluted suits of armour from Graz and, especially, by twelve exceptional examples of "tailored", richly ornamented metal suits for emperors, archdukes and landgraves from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
More....Art aujourdhui info