Art and culture

Located in a beautiful late sixteenth-century palazzo on Via Borgo, the museum houses the Municipal Collection and is home to two foundations; the Marianne Werefkin Foundation and the Richard and Uli Seewald Foundation. The Municipal Collection originated in 1922, when many of Ascona’s resident artists decided to donate one of their works as the basis of a future municipal museum. Among the collection’s most important works are Alexej Jawlensky’s Head of a Girl, Cuno Amiet’s Fruit Picking and Paul Klee’s The Red House, all of which were donated by the Russian painter Marianne Werefkin, together with five of her own works. In the years that followed, the collection continued to grow. A major presence is that of the Orsa Maggiore (Great Bear or Grosse Bär) group, founded by Werefkin herself together with Germans Walter Helbig and Otto Niemeyer-Holstein, Swiss Albert Kohler and Ernst Frick, Dutch Otto van Rees and American Gordon Mallet McCouch. Among the most recent acquisitions are works by Julius Bissier, Ben Nicholson and Italo Valenti, as well as the important collections Carl Weidemeyer, Charlotte Bara and Anna Iduna Zehnder.

For over forty years, Galleria Sacchetti has been the cornerstone of the Centro di Cultura e d’Arte Ascona (CCAA), housed in a recently restored 16th-century building that preserves its original beauty. This space, nestled in the historic center and just a few steps from the shores of Lake Maggiore, serves as a meeting point for artists and art enthusiasts alike. The gallery offers a diverse program, showcasing works by established artists and emerging talents, both local and international. Its six exhibition rooms, open year-round, celebrate all disciplines of contemporary art, fostering a dialogue between Ascona’s cultural heritage and innovative artistic impulses. The CCAA is not just a place of art, but a vibrant hub of creativity that inspires and connects.

The Museo d’Arte della Svizzera italiana (MASI Lugano) is an essential stop in Ticino for art lovers. The museum offers a rich and engaging exhibition programme that spans the history of art, from the masterpieces of early modernist pioneers to the most cutting-edge expressions of contemporary creativity. The temporary exhibitions hosted inside the LAC building explore a wide range of artistic techniques, including painting, sculpture, photography, and video art. In addition, the museum’s permanent collection is displayed in regularly changing shows in Palazzo Reali, the historic venue in the centre of Lugano.

Eliška Bartek, a globally acclaimed Czech- Swiss artist, lives and works in Ascona. Her works have been exhibited in prestigious museums such as the Museum St. Petersburg, the Museum of Modern Art in Salzburg, and the Tokyo Museum. Her artistic journey led her to Harald Szeemann’s La Fabbrica in Maggia, where she was inspired by the renowned exhibition curator and lived and painted for seven years. During this time, she created captivating watercolors depicting the Bavona and Maggia valleys, which were showcased in a Berlin exhibition inaugurated by the Swiss Ambassador. Another significant body of work by Eliška Bartek is the «Moving Mountains» series, which she developed from 2008 to 2010, following in the footsteps of Ferdinand Hodler. It was exhibited at the renowned Haus am Lützowplatz in Berlin, with support from the Swiss Federal Office of Culture. In her Losone studio, Eliška presents her latest watercolor series, «Lago Maggiore». The fusion of visual art and sound is also represented in the showroom of Jochen Fiedler, a high-fidelity sound expert who designs state-of-the-art audio systems. In this exclusive space, the worlds of visual and auditory art merge seamlessly. Jochen Fiedler collaborates with the world’s most renowned brands, including Accuphase, McIntosh, Wilson Audio, Cabasse, SME, and Transrotor.