Leonard’s restaurant inside Le Grand Bellevue Gstaad, a favorite winter destination for the international jet set, is transformed into a contemporary art gallery. Thanks to the seven new paintings created by Rita Ackermann in collaboration with Hauser & Wirth. The artist, who ever since she entered the world of art, has always created works in dialogue with those of other colleagues, this time she chose to place herself in the presence of Ferdinand Hodler, one of the giants of world art . The result of this challenge has a name and surname: “The Ecstasy of Leaving the Exile, I-VII”, a monumental frieze work exhibited to the public for the first time. This is the first frieze ever in Ackermann’s career. Composed of seven individual paintings, it features the classic adolescents who act as leitmotifs in the works of the artist of Hungarian origin but now a New Yorker by adoption since the early 1990s. The recurring figures in each of the individual paintings look like individual frames of a film, while the red line of paint that runs through them recalls the typical continuity of a film. “Each painting must start from the lowest level to build itself, regardless of the level of its predecessor – explained the painter -. Refinement is not necessary. Painting does not require complicated thoughts, but sincerity.” By Germano D’Acquisto