Dana

This monograph, published in two volumes as an elegant boxed set, provides a retrospective of the work of Yves Dana, the Swiss sculptor of Egyptian descent, revealing the variety and quality of his creations. The first volume presents Dana’s stone, bronze and iron sculptures, and paintings through a series of magnificent photographs accompanied by a poetical commentary byTahar Ben Jelloun. The second contains a catalogue raisonné that includes over 600 works with critical notes by Matthias Frehner. The reader will be able to admire Dana’s iron, stone, and bronze works, as well as his paintings marking the various stages of his artistic development and illustrating his changing interests.

Yves Dana devoted himself entirely to sculpture from 1981. The quality of his work was quickly recognized by the Alice Pauli Gallery, which organized several exhibitions from 1984 to bring his work to the attention of the art world in Switzerland and abroad. The Ditesheim and Krugier galleries, in Geneva and New York, respectively, were quick to follow suit and further boosted his reputation. There followed a number of solo and group exhibitions, notably at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. With the support of several galleries, the sculptor has exhibited at a number of international art fairs, such as ART Basel, ART Miami, FIAC Paris, Arco Madrid, and KIAF Seoul. Yves Dana now divides his time between L’Orangerie Lausanne and his studio in Tuscany.

Tahar Ben Jelloun is a member of the Académie Goncourt and the most widely translated author writing in French. Among the fifty or so books published by Éditions du Seuil and Gallimard are La Nuit Sacrée, winner of the Prix Goncourt in 1987, Alberto Giacometti (1991), L’Islam expliqué aux enfants (2002), and Lettre à Matisse (2013).
Matthias Frehner has been the Director of the Bern Kunstmuseum since 2002. He has published works on Swiss art and classical modernity (notably on Anker, Segantini, Vallotton, Oppenheim, Hodler, Amiet, Burne-Jones, Derain, Scully), looted art, and the history of collections.