Modern & Contemporary Art Exhibitions in Bern

"What was a real and directly experienced present or even future for Kirchner is the past for Baselitz. What has happened in the meantime weighs too heavily. Precisely because they were created using the same expressive method, these two artistic works show us their respective different sensitivities all the more vividly. In comparison, the incomparable becomes apparent." (Wolfgang Henze) In the lives of the two great German artists, the year 1938 forms an existential mirror point: the year Kirchner died - the year Baselitz was born. Ingeborg Henze-Ketterer and Wolfgang Henze have pointed out that the lives and careers of the two are strangely mirrored, "in reverse order, upside down, so to speak." Anselm Wagner also describes this incomparable pair as having “two faces”: “While Kirchner looks ahead, Baselitz, in the spirit of postmodernism, looks back to the wealth of art history in order to generate ever more images from existing ones.” In 1905, Kirchner and Brücke called for the opposite—namely, the heightened expression of a new attitude toward life, “immediate and unadulterated,” in work corresponds to a euphoria of progress that has become completely alien to Baselitz and his generation. As mentioned at the outset, the events that have transpired since then weigh too heavily, and Baselitz’s works arise primarily from memory, reflection, and the reformulation of images from the past—always “expressive, but not expressionistic.” Consequently, the so-called “Remix” series emerged beginning in 2005, in which the retrospective exploration of his own body of work is declared an artistic concept and finds expression in drawings, prints, and paintings. The “Remix” woodcuts on display in our exhibition—with titles such as “The Shepherd,” “Painter in a Coat—Two Boots,” or “Poet in Boots”—are all reinterpretations of the significant heroic images that Baselitz created in the 1960s. Rhythmic and commanding, the six large-format woodcuts—Baselitz’s heroes—are distributed throughout the exhibition space, breaking up the works by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, which are hung in chronological order and offer a cross-section of his creative years. Kirchner’s centrally hung woodcut “Die Freunde” not only approaches Baselitz’s format in terms

Das Kunstmuseum Bern besitzt eine bedeutende Kunstsammlung vom Spätmittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Die Sammlungspräsentation umfasst in wechselnden Präsentationen ausgewählte Bestände. Altbau Im Untergeschoss sind mit Kubismus, Expressionismus, Surrealismus und abstrakter Kunst die zentralen avantgardistischen Strömungen der Moderne vertreten. Höhepunkte sind etwa Pablo Picassos Violon accroché au mur, Meret Oppenheims Verzauberung oder Piet Mondrians Tableau No. II, with Black and Grey. Ergänzt wird die Präsentation durch eine Auswahl von Werken des Berner Künstlers Adolf Wölfli aus dem Bestand der Adolf Wölfli-Stiftung. Zwei Säle im Erdgeschoss sind Werken von Schweizer Künstler:innen des 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhunderts gewidmet. Dazu zählen die berühmten symbolistischen Gemälde von Ferdinand Hodler, Die Nacht und Der Tag, als auch Werke von Albert Anker und Arnold Böcklin. In zwei Kabinetten sind Highlights der impressionistischen und postimpressionistischen Malerei zu sehen, darunter Paul Cézannes Portrait de l’artiste au chapeau à large bord, Tournesols fanés von Vincent van Gogh und La blouse bleue von Henri Matisse. Im Obergeschoss sind in der Ausstellung umfangreiche Bestände aus der Sammlung vom 13. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert vereint: Andachtsbilder aus dem italienischen Tre- und Quattrocento, kunstvolle Altartafeln der Berner Nelkenmeister und von Niklaus Manuel, sowie Meisterwerke aus dem Berner Barock (bis 27. September 2026). Erweiterungsbau Das Untergeschoss vereint Gemälde von berühmten Vertreter:innen des Abstrakten Expressionismus – beispielsweise Jackson Pollocks Brown and Silver II oder Lee Krasners Forest no 2 – mit Positionen aus der abstrakten und Konkreten Kunst, etwa von Sophie Taeuber-Arp oder Max Bill.

Florence Henri was a real globetrotter of modernism. Born in New York in 1893, she lived in Munich, Paris, Rome and, finally, on the Isle of Wight in England. She attended the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau, where Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky taught. These periods abroad played a decisive role in shaping her artistic language. More than 80 works, including drawings, paintings, photographs and collages, trace Henri’s artistic development: from the paintings of the 1920s created during her studies with Fernand Léger, through her experimental photography, to her return to abstract painting from the 1940s until her death. Curators: Roberto Lacarbonara und Giovanni Battista Martini The exhibition is organised by the Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, and the Palazzo Ducale, Genoa, in collaboration with the Florence Henri Archive. Fokus. Florence Henri (1893–1982) is part of the permanent exhibition Kosmos Klee. The Collection The permanent exhibition offers visitors a chronological overview of Klee's artistic oeuvre and presents around seventy works as well as biographical material and archive items, which are regularly changed. Smaller focus exhibitions with a thematic reference to Paul Klee and his work are shown in one room at a time.

The exhibition is dedicated to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's works of the so-called 'New Style' - a creative phase that the artist developed from the mid-1920s and continued into the mid-1930s. A concise exhibition unfolds over two floors, using selected paintings on the first floor and works on paper in the basement to illustrate the characteristic features, developments and peculiarities of this 'New Style'. The aim is to give this phase within Kirchner's oeuvre the status it deserves.

Solveig Qu Suess’ Videoarbeit RED. A Love Letter ist eine zärtliche Annäherung an das Leben ihrer Mutter. Diese arbeitete im China der 1980er-Jahre als Optikingenieurin. Ausgangspunkt der autoethnografischen Recherche ist die Frage, wie sich ihre Geschichte erzählen lässt, wenn sie durch eine staatliche Geheimhaltungsvereinbarung unzugänglich bleibt. Solveig Qu Suess fügt Familienfotografien, Bilder aus Unternehmensarchiven, aufgezeichnete Gespräche und stille Momente aus dem gemeinsamen Alltag von Mutter und Tochter zu einem fragmentarischen Liebesbrief zusammen. Die Kamera wird dabei zu einem Instrument, um Nähe und Entfremdung zur Mutter sowie Fragen der eigenen Identität und diasporischen Familiengeschichte zu erkunden.

In the first half of the 20th century, the Brazilian artist Roberto Burle Marx (1909–1994) revolutionised landscape architecture by transferring compositional principles from painting and music to nature. While his plans resemble abstract paintings, he integrated sculptures as well as three-dimensional and colourful wall surfaces into his landscape projects. In his paintings one encounters abstract plants and the play of light in the treetops. As a painter, graphic artist, sculptor, jewellery designer, stage and costume designer, environmental activist and collector, he participated – in the spirit of the Brazilian avant-garde – in the re-evaluation of what was considered ‘Brazilian’. In his parks, for example, he used native plant varieties, even though these were held to be inferior, and advocated for the study and protection of Brazilian flora. Curatorial team: Zentrum Paul Klee: Fabienne Eggelhöfer and Myriam Dössegger Fundación Juan March: Manuel Fontán del Junco and María Toledo Scientific and curatorial advisor: Isabela Ono, Instituto Burle Marx Exhibition organised and curated by the Zentrum Paul Klee and Fundación Juan March in partnership with the Instituto Burle Marx and the support from Sítio Roberto Burle Marx.