Harald Szeemann, Monte Verità — installation view at Kunsthaus Zurich, 1978
Monte Verità: "The place where our minds can reach up to the heavens..."
Harald Szeemann , April 1985
In the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth, the Ticino, republic and canton since 1803, became a gateway to the south and favourite destination of a group of unconventional loners who found in the region, with its southern atmosphere, fertile ground in which to sow the seeds of the utopia they were unable to cultivate in the north. The Ticino came to represent the antithesis of the urbanised, industrialized north, a sanctuary for all kinds if idealist. From 1900 onwards Mount Monescia above Ascona became a pole of attraction for those seeking an ‘'alternative'' life. These reformers who sought a third way between the capitalist and communist blocks, eventually found a home in the region of the north Italian lakes.
The founders came from all directions : Henry Oedenkoven from Antwerp, the pianist Ida Hofmann from Montenegro, the artist Gusto and the ex-officer Karl Gräser from Transylvania. United by a common ideal they settled on the ‘'Mount of Truth'' as they renamed Monte Monescia.
Draped in loose flowing garments and with long hair they worked in the gardens and fields, built spartan timber cabins and found relaxation in dancing and naked bathing, exposing their bodies to light, air, sun and water. Their diet excluded all animal foods and was based entirely on plants, vegetables and fruit. They workshipped nature, preaching its purity and interpreting it symbolically as the ultimate work of art: ‘'Parsifal's meadow'', ‘'The rock of Valkyrie'' and the ‘'Harrassprung'' were symbolic names which with time were adopted even by the local population of Ascona who had initially regarded the community with suspicion.
Their social organisation based on the co-operative system and through which they strove to achieve the emancipation of women, self-criticism, new ways of cultivating mind and spirit and the unity of body and soul, can at the best be described as a Christian-communist community. The intensity of the single ideals fused in this community was such that word of it soon spread across the whole of Europe and overseas, whilst gradually over the years the community itself became a sanatorium frequented by theosophists, reformers, anarchists, communists, socialdemocrats, psyco-analysts, followed by literary personalities, writers, poets, artists and finally emigrants of both world wars: Raphael Friedeberg, Prince Peter Kropotkin, Erich Mühsam who declared Ascona ‘'the Republic of the Homeless'', Otto Gross who planned a ‘'School for the liberation of humanity'', August Bebel, Karl Kautsky, Otto Braun, even perhaps Lenin and Trotzki, Hermann Hesse, Franziska Gräfin zu Reventlow, Else Lasker-Schüler, D.H Lawrence, Rudolf von Laban, Mary Wigman, Isadora Duncan, Hugo Ball, Hans Arp, Hans Richter, Marianne von Werefkin, Alexej von Jawlensky, Arthur Segal, El Lissitzky and many others.
After the departure of the founder for Brazil in 1920 there followed a brief
bohemian period at the Monte Verità which lasted until the complex was
purchased as a residence by the Baron von der Heydt, banker to the ex-Kaiser
Willhelm II and one of the most important collectors of contemporary and non
European art. The bohemian life continued in the village and in the Locarnese
valleys from then on.
The Mount, now used as a Hotel
and park, still maintains its almost magic power of attraction. Along with the
proven magnetic anomalies of geological formations underlying Ascona, it is as
if the mount preserves, hidden away out of sight, the sum of all the successful
and unsuccessful attempts to breach the gap between the ‘'I'' and ‘'we'', and
the striving towards an ideal creative society, thus making the Monte Verità a
special scenic and climatic micro-paradise.
The Monte Verità is also however a well preserved testimony for the history of
architecture. From Adam's hut to the Bauhaus. The ideology of the first
settlers demanded spartan chalet-like timber dwellings with plenty of light and
air and few comforts. Shortly after 1900 the following buildings began to spring
up: Casa Selma (now museum), [...], Casa Andrea with its geometrical façade,
the sunniest of the buildings (now converted), Casa Elena and the Casa del Tè -
Tea House (now demolished) and the Casa dei Russi (hideout for Russian students
after the 1905 revolution and now undergoing renovation). The Casa Centrale was
built for the community and allowed for maximum natural light. Ying-Yang
symbols were worked into windows and balconies. (In 1948 this building was
demolished to make way for a restaurant and only the curving flight of steps
remains).
Henry Oedenkoven built Casa Anatta as living quarters and reception rooms in
the theosophist style with rounded corners everywhere, double timber walls,
sliding doors, domed ceilings and huge windows with views of the landscape as
supreme works of art, a large flat roof and sun-terrace.
In the mains rooms of this building Mary Wingman danced, Bebel, Kautsky and
Martin Buber discussed, Ida Hofmann played Wagner and the community held its
reunions. In 1926 the Baron von der Heydt converted Casa Anatta into a private
residence and adorned it with his collection of African, Indian and Chinese
art, now housed at Rietberg Museum, and a collection of Swiss carnival masks
which is now in Washington. After the death of the Baron in 1964 the Casa
Anatta, described by the architecture theorist Siegfried Giedion in 1929 as a
perfect example of ‘'liberated living'', fell into disuse and dilapidation. In
1979 it was re-activated to house the Monte Verità exhibition and has been the
History Museum of the Monte Verità since 1981. (Open to the public from April
to October). In 1909 the Turinese architect Anselmo Secondo built the Villa
Semiramis as a guest house and hotel. The Villa, clinging to the mountain side,
presents many architectural characteristics of the Piedmont ‘'Jugendstil'' of
which the triangular shutters are the most striking example. In 1970 work was
carried out to remodernize the Villa, true to the original style, under the
direction of the Ticinese architect Livio Vacchini. The arrival of the Baron on
the Mount marked the advent of modern architecture in the Ticino The original
contract for a hotel in the characteristically rational and functional Bauhaus
style went to Mies van der Rohe and was executed by Emil Fahrenkamp, builder of
the Shell Building in Berlin and later designer of the Rhein Steel Works. Like
Casa Anatta, the Hotel is built against the rock face. The design both of the
exterior and of the rooms is simple and clear-cut and the suites are furnished in
the Bauhaus tradition. The reception rooms and the corridors are light and airy
and the metalwork studied down to the smallest detail.Thanks to the
construction of the Hotel, Bauhaus masters such as Gropius, Albers, Bayer,
Breuer, Feiniger, Schlemmer, Schawinksy and Moholy-Nagy visited Ascona and the
Monte Verità and there discovered what Ise Gropius was to put into words in
1978 ‘‘A place where our minds can reach up to the heavens...''.
Text by Caitlin Murray
http://www.impossibleobjectsmarfa.com/fragments/monte-verit?rq=monte%20verita
