Exhibition Fondation Beyeler takes us to the Northern Lights with Munch and Co.
SDA
24.1.2025 - 15:11

With "Northern Lights", the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen BS declares the far north to be a place of artistic longing. It shows how Edvard Munch and artists still unknown in this country captured the primeval forest and the special light of the north.
When we think of art from the years 1880 to 1930 from the far north, we automatically think of the Norwegian Edvard Munch, one of the pioneers of modernism. Many of his works can be seen in the exhibition - incidentally the only ones in which people can be discovered.
For example, in the charming painting "Children in the Forest" from 1901/1902, which shows a small group of children gazing in awe at the dark edge of a forest, behind which witches, trolls and other eerie creatures from the world of fairy tales and legends may be hiding.
The forest and above it the sky, mostly shrouded in twilight or occasionally colored by the northern lights, play the main role in the approximately 70 paintings by 13 artists from Scandinavia, Canada and Russia.
Photorealism and abstraction
Sometimes they are photorealistic forest scenes, often dreamy to expressive views of snow-covered forest edges, but also paintings that glide into the abstract. For example, the waves of color transitioning from red to green in "Abstract Tree Forms" from 1931/32 by the Canadian artist Emily Carr, who takes what Munch had begun with his expressionist alienations to the extreme.
The Finnish-Swedish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela, whose realistic landscapes have a strong appeal, is represented in the exhibition with numerous paintings. This is particularly true of the large-format painting "The Mäntykosti Waterfall" from 1892-1894.
The landscapes by Prince Eugene, bathed in more or less diffuse twilight, are also among the discoveries. Incidentally, this is not a pseudonym; the painter was actually a scion of the Swedish royal family.
In the park in front of the museum, a contemporary addition is the audiovisual LED installation "Boreal Dreams" by Danish contemporary artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen, commissioned by the Fondation Beyeler. In it, the artist addresses the effects of the climate crisis on the forest landscapes that can be seen inside the museum.
The exhibition "Northern Lights" is a cooperation with the Buffalo AKG Museum, New York and can be seen until May 25.