Suzanne Baumann. The Ludwig Museum in the Russian Museum

An exhibition of works of a Swiss artist Suzanne Baumann "The Small World Exhibition" includes 5 thematic sections with their titles formulating the main ideas of the world-image offered. These ideas are studied at the broad natural and cultural-and-historical material with poetically interpreted data and problematics of mythology, natural science, ethnology, ecology, history, and technology engaged. Organic essence of her concept is emphasized by Suzanne Baumann by devoting the exhibition to antique goddess Gaea. The first theme appeals to problematics of cosmogonic myths about genesis of the universe. The following two deal with global physical characteristics of being, which have become the most important categories of judgement about the world, too. The fourth section is devoted to galaxies and solar systems - astronomic night pictures come along with models of celestial bodies and systems. The closing section is connected by Suzanna Baumann with the feeling of "world's pulse" represented with colourful symbolic images. Exhibition room is filled with all kinds of curiosities - unusual maps and tables, exotic things and natural rarities, strange mechanisms and bizarre tools, mysterious physical instruments and enigmatic astronomic models, old-fashioned laboratory equipment, and transparent chemical glassware. Suzanne Baumann was born in 1942 in Zurich. In 1958 she was admitted to the Regional College of Art Manchester and London, Art faculty. In 1960-1961 she exchanged into the Royal Art Academy in Copenhagen. The school of applied art in Zurich(1962-1963) was the third place Suzanne Baumann studied in. Here she made a large fez for the Burgholzli mental health clinic. In 1963-1966 Suzanne Baumann lived in Lucerne and worked in an experimental studio commune Villa Bellerive. During those years her strong tendency towards style-conscious self representation starts. Oeuvre, bohemian way of life, and utopian ideas influence her everyday thoughts greatly. 1965-1971 were spent traveling across Europe on purposes of study. In 1986-1989 Suzanne Baumann works at short stories with illustrations, which were published in her own publishing house in 1989 under the title of "Power and mystery". Since 1995, along with her oeuvre Suzanne Baumann has been engaged in organizing cultural exchange between West and East, as well as has been actively taking part in traveling exhibitions in Switzerland and Byelorussia.