The word horizon is in itself hugely evocative. A technical definition would describe it as the line that marks the boundary between the Earth’s surface and the celestial sphere. And yet it is an abstract liminality, an unreachable border that we can see, but never touch. Like water, it shows us an infinite boundary that changes shape and location depending on the position of the observer (or of the continent), a “liquid border”... The elemental matter water, in its many forms and states, is closely linked to the idea of the horizon, especially in its symbolic dimension, in its changing state, its infinite continuity. The two share a perfect starting point for onstructing symbols.

The exhibition Horizon, the Power of Water in the Würth Collection brings together these two ideas and explores how art has portrayed the states and forms of water and its ambivalent meanings. Water, clouds, wind, in all their manifestations, determine our planet’s climate and are part of our daily lives. Water is a metaphor for creation, fertility, civilisation, communication, purity, life and well-being, but also destruction, violence, boundary, insalubrity, fear and death. Water’s forms, as an object and subject, are inherent to the landscape tradition and act as a visual metaphor. An image of clouds before a storm, of coral reefs, of retreating glaciers, a swimming pool in summer, a stream flowing through a forest, a flood or, simply, the calm sea, holds a meaning that goes beyond the image itself and says something about us as a society.

The exhibition delves into the depiction of water’s forms through 70 works by 58 artists from the Würth Collection. Horizon: The Power of Water in the Würth Collection proposes an artistic journey that begins in the late seventeenth century and progresses to the present showing the changes in artistic horizons, from the imaginary landscapes of the Romantics to the Impressionist plays of light on the sea, the existentialism of Expressionist painting, the formal experimentation of Geometric Abstraction, the objectual process of Conceptual Art, the plain, bright colouring of Pop Art or the austerity of Minimalism.

Water means life, climate determines life. Both feature in this exhibition which, through artistic representation, explores their meanings and reflects on global warming and its environmental and human consequences, on human responsibility for this change and on our hopes to build a new horizon.