Inaugurating Our New Basel Gallery With Switzerland’s First Solo Exhibition of Vilhelm Hammershøi

‘Opening this space in the cultural heart of Basel will allow for intimate encounters with art of an extraordinary calibre,’ says Iwan Wirth. ‘In doing so we are proud to contribute to the community of outstanding museums, institutions, private collections and galleries in Basel that attract visitors from around the world. Since we opened our very first space in Zurich in 1992, we have always sought to create a dialogue between artists of different eras. Hammershøi possessed a powerfully prescient vision and his art remains as vital and relevant today as when it was created. We look forward to opening the doors to this unique exhibition in June.’

Carlo Knöll says, ‘It’s a true honor to inaugurate Hauser & Wirth in Basel with the work of Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi and to realize this project with Hammershøi expert Dr. Felix Krämer. It has been a long-held dream to present this truly exceptional artist whose lineage situates him as a kindred spirit to Johannes Vermeer, Giorgio Morandi, Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth. Hammershøi’s work reveals a remarkably modernist sensibility that continues to garner new generations of followers who join those steeped in the history of art of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. His work resonates with the current international artistic community, including museums and institutions in Europe and the US, collectors, scholars and living artists. Yet, despite being an artist of great acclaim and nuance whose work is held in museum collections around the world, exhibitions dedicated to Hammershøi have been relatively few and far between. By assembling the 18 works within this cabinet-like exhibition, we will create a special opportunity to discover and rediscover this artist.’

About Hammershøi and the exhibition

Born in 1864, Hammershøi’s timeless paintings defy categorization, visually bridging the art of the Old Masters with that of the modern era. His work has been the subject of major international retrospectives and exhibitions over the last 20 years, including shows at The Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2008), Kunsthalle München, Munich, Germany (2012) and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, Japan (2020). Hammershøi remained loyal to his hometown of Copenhagen. Through his travels to the European centers of Paris and London, he familiarized himself with the rapidly evolving international art of his time. However, his painting and drawing practice found inspiration in Dutch 17th-century genre painting, particularly the mysterious domestic interiors of Johannes Vermeer, and in the 19th-century Danish Golden Age, creating a highly individual artistic language. The interior world of the apartments he and his wife Ida Ilsted occupied in Copenhagen, each depiction imbued with a contemplative stillness, were to remain the artist’s enduring fascination.

The exhibition in Basel shows the breadth and depth of the artist’s practice through works dating from 1883 to 1914. Alongside the interior paintings for which Hammershøi is highly renowned, the exhibition features a number of the artist’s early farmstead paintings and cityscapes of Copenhagen and London, alongside a rare self-portrait of the artist titled ‘Double Portrait of the Artist and His Wife, Seen through a Mirror. The Cottage Spurveskjul’ (1911). A further nine exemplary interior paintings featuring an isolated female figure are on view, including major paintings of the artist’s wife Ida Ilsted such as ‘Interior with a Standing Woman’ (1898) and ‘Woman Before a Mirror’ (1906). Characterized by their mesmerizing composure and omnipresent minimal color palette, ‘Vilhelm Hammershøi. Silence’ devotes its attention to these genre paintings without narratives. Their quiet but radical originality situates the artist as a powerful precursor to the modern masters who were to follow.