From Goya to Eliasson via Rodin and Arp, a 2021 of great exhibitions at the Beyeler Foundation

The Beyeler Foundation in Basel has announced its rich exhibition program for 2021. A 2021 that has already begun, however, with a number of exhibitions already open that will run long into next year. The first, which opened on October 10 and runs until March 28, is a focus on the collection, titled The lion is hungry: a selection of paintings and sculptures arranged over eight rooms, featuring great masterpieces of modern and contemporary art, to remind the public how exciting and fascinating art is even in difficult times such as the ones we are living through. Also running until Jan. 17 is U.S. artist Roni Horn ’s solo exhibition entitled You are the weather: one hundred portraits of a young woman, through which the viewer encounters the same person (an Icelandic girl) to demonstrate how human beings are subject to change but also how climate and weather affect people (and thus explains the title of the exhibition).

On November 27, however, there was the opening of Snowman, a sculpture by the Swiss duo Fischli/Weiss, which will remain on display at the Beyeler Foundation throughout 2021: it is the figure of a snowman enclosed inside a refrigerator with a glass door, which will allow him to survive even the summer weather. The work is intended to illustrate the contradiction between the natural and the artificial (in this case with a snow creature that lives spontaneously and quietly in its context, but becomes completely dependent on electricity when translocated outside of it), in the manner of the poetics of the absurd typical of Fischli/Weiss’ works. Again, the Rodin / Arp exhibition opened on December 13, which compares the works of Auguste Rodin and Hans Arp for the first time: their works profoundly marked their time, and the exhibition aims to highlight the connections between their art. Indeed, Rodin introduced new ideas that Arp developed and reinterpreted in different forms, manifesting with his older French colleague remarkable affinities.

The 2021 program begins on Jan. 29 with a performance by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, running through Feb. 14: her talk compares her choreography Dark Red with the world of Rodin and Arp. Rodin’s obsession with the human body and Arp’s desire for the emancipation of form are placed in dialogue with De Keersmaeker’s choreographic research: an exploration of the human body’s capacities toward abstraction, an investigation of movement in time and space. April 18, on the other hand, is the date that marks the opening of Olafur Eliasson’s solo exhibition; the renowned Danish artist, who works in a variety of mediums (sculpture, painting, photography, film, installations, architectural projects, interventions in public space), arrives in Basel with an exhibition that, until July 11, explores our preconceptions about nature and culture.

Big names from the 19th century onward are coming this fall. Close-up opens Sept. 19 (through Jan. 2, 2022), an exhibition centered on nine women artists (Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Lotte Laserstein, Frida Kahlo, Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas, Cindy Sherman, Elizabeth Peyton) united by the vigor they expressed in depicting the human figure, whether portraits or self-portraits. They were also chosen according to their relevant role in the development of modern art history since 1870 today. Close-up will therefore be a focus on the artist’s gaze, their vision of reality expressed through portraits of themselves and others. The exhibition will provide visitors with a synoptic perspective that will account for the changes in viewpoints over the past one hundred and fifty years. Finally, the long-awaited exhibition on Francisco de Goya, organized in collaboration with the Prado Museum, which will open from October 10, 2021 until January 23, 2022, and will be one of the largest exhibitions on the artist ever organized outside Spain. In addition, the Beyeler Foundation will host some of the Spanish painter’s great masterpieces coming out of his native country for the first time: there will be a total of 75 paintings, about 50 drawings and as many prints, and the focus of the exhibition will be on the artist’s creative process.

For all the information you can already have a look at the Beyeler Foundation website.

Francisco de Goya, La maja vestida (1800-1807; oil on canvas, 95 x 190 cm, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado) © Photographic Archive. Museo Nacional del Prado. Madrid

From Goya to Eliasson via Rodin and Arp, a 2021 of great exhibitions at the Beyeler Foundation

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