Tbilisi exhibition to celebrate Mexican artist Roger von Gunten

Rich landscapes of Mexican countryside, represented in expressionist works by celebrated Swiss-born Mexican painter Roger von Gunten, will go on display for six weeks at Tbilisi's Museum of Fine Arts starting this Thursday.

Presenting the popular artist's impressions of one's unity with natural surroundings, the exhibition has been aptly titled Eden and will welcome visitors interested in acquainting themselves with Mexican postmodernism.

A preview from Georgian National Museum (GNM) — an umbrella organisation uniting state venues including the Fine Arts Museum — said the selected works would illustrate "chromatism, expressionism and informalism" of the artist's creative career.

Roger von Gunten's 1991 work 'La oscuridad del dia'. Photo: Georgian National Museum.

Born in Zurich, Switzerland, von Gunten studied at the city's School of Arts and Crafts before arriving in Mexico in 1957 and staying in the country.

He studied etching at the Ibero-American University of Mexico City before his preference for rural life meant von Gunten moved to the town of Tepoztlan, south of the capital.

The natural environment of the town played a major role in the artist's subsequent works, as acknowledged in the GNM preview for the exhibition.

Von Gunten's work 'La madrugada' will be among the exhibited paintings . Photo: Georgian National Museum.

A release by the museum said working in Tepoztlan represented "spiritual liberation" from the iconographic world for von Gunten, enabling him to immerse himself in the lush greenery which "translates into a fantastic representation of this harmonic coexistence" in the artist's paintings.

Von Gunten was part of Generacion de la Ruptura, a group of artists whose creative work represented the transition from modernism to postmodernism in Mexican artistic tradition. The artist is a recipient of Mexico's 2014 Fine Art Medal.

The exhibition of the painter's works is designed to mark 25 years of diplomatic relations between Georgia and Mexico, and will run at t Shalva Amiranashvili Museum of Fine Arts through September 20.