Latest Events in Riehen(March Updated)

In autumn 2024, the Fondation Beyeler will host the first Henri Matisse retrospective in the German-speaking world in almost 20 years. Matisse was one of the most important artists of the Modernist movement. His ground-breaking work has had a profound influence on art across many generations, from his contemporaries to present day artists. By liberating colour from the subject and simplifying forms, he created a new basis for painting and introduced a new lightness to art. With more than 70 major works on loan from prestigious European and American museums as well as private collections, the exhibition focuses onthe development and diversity of the artist’s pioneering oeuvre. It begins with paintings from his early period around 1900, guides visitors through the revolutionary compositions of Fauvism and the experimental works of the 1910s to the sensuous paintings of the Nice period and the 1930s, culminating in the legendary silhouettes of his late works in the 1940s and 1950s. The conceptual starting point for the exhibition is Charles Baudelaire’s famous poemInvitation to the Voyagefrom 1857. Numerous leitmotifs and key themes that are at the heart of Baudelaire’s poem are also to be found in Matisse’s paintings. This is the starting point for an exhibition that welcomes visitors on a journey through Matisse’s unique life and work, which were in turn shaped by numerous voyages. In his exploration of countries such as Italy, Spain and Morocco and as far afield as Tahiti, the artist always drew inspiration from the nature and art of other cultures.

In a worldwide first, the Fondation Beyeler will present Surrealist masterworks from the Collection Hersaint. The exhibition will feature around 50 key works by artists such as Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Dorothea Tanning and many more. The works reflect major themes of Surrealism such as dreams, the unconscious, metamorphoses or the forest as a site of mystery. The collection was established by the banker Claude Hersaint, who purchased his first painting by Max Ernst at the age of only 17. His lifelong passion for led him to assemble one of the most significant collections of Surrealist art. Paintings from the Hersaint Collection will be displayed in dialogue with works from the Fondation Beyeler.The exhibition is made possible by the support of Claude Hersaint’s daughter Evangéline Hersaint and her wife Laetitia Hersaint-Lair.

The Fondation Beyeler will devote a comprehensive solo exhibition to the artist Vija Celmins (*1938, Riga), who masterfully works in painting, drawing, and sculpture. Celmins’ visual language is both subtle and powerful. Initially, Celmins focussed on everyday objects as well as scenes of disaster and war. She then turned to the surface structures of spider webs, oceans and deserts, and later more particularly the night sky and galaxies. Her images resist the cursory gaze; yet once we engage with them, they deploy a fascinating beauty, between intimacy and distance. The exhibition will display a selection of works produced by Celmins from the 1960s to the present day, bringing to vivid life the mesmerising effect of her pictorial worlds. It will also feature a small selection of sculptures—which Celmins herself qualifies as “three-dimensional paintings”. Finally, the exhibition will present a new group of works that carry forward Celmins’ long-standing and intense engagement with surfaces and spatial depth. The exhibition will be the most significant presentation of Celmins’ work in Europe in almost 20 years.

Kunst Raum Riehen presents the first institutional solo exhibition by emerging Swiss artist Marius Steiger (born 1999 in Bern; lives in Bern and London).In his practice, Steiger explores painting and its history through contrasts such as authenticity and artificiality, figuration and abstraction, illusion and simulation, and the relationship between humans and modern technologies. Rather than drawing from nature or real objects, he works with his own digitally generated 3D renderings. From these he creates pictorial works in the tradition of trompe-l’œil: shaped canvases with a digital aesthetic that imitate individual motifs or situations. Their flawless surfaces and fragmentation both seduce and betray their artificiality — pointing to their origin in the virtual world.

The exhibition will provide a comprehensive overview of Yayoi Kusama's career spanning more than seven decades. In addition to some of her most iconic works, the exhibition will feature her early works that have never been exhibited in Europe before, as well as new works and one of the artist's famous Infinity Mirror Rooms. Visitors will enter an infinitely expanding world amidst Kusama's unique polka dots and mirrored rooms. The exhibition will focus on the rich artistic media that Kusama has created over the years, including painting, sculpture, installation, drawing, collage, improvisation, live performance, fashion and literature. The exhibition is co-organized by the Fondation Beyeler, the Museum Ludwig Cologne and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.