ExhibitionSeptember 8, 2021
Close-up at Fondation Beyeler
The exhibition presents nine women artists whose work marked the development of art history from 1870 to today. Close-up will be on display at Fondation Beyeler in Basel from 19 September 2021 until 2 January 2022.
The visitors will have a unique opportunity of seeing the works by Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Lotte Laserstein, Frida Kahlo, Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas, Cindy Sherman, Elizabeth Peyton united on the depiction of the human figure: through portrait, and the self-portrait.
From 1870, women made their first relevant incursions into the art world as professionals; before, women were considered Lady Painters or amateurs. The French painter Berthe Morisot and the American Mary Cassatt, both were working in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s; the German Paula Modersohn-Becker, moving in the early 1900s between Paris and the north German provincial town of Worpswede; the German Lotte Laserstein, active from 1925 to 1933 in Berlin during the later years of the Weimar Republic; Frida Kahlo, who worked from the early 1920s until around 1950 in Mexico City, during the consolidation and institutionalization of the Mexican state in the aftermath of the Revolution; the American Alice Neel, with a practice spanning the late 1920s to the 1980s, at first in Cuba and then in Manhattan; Marlene Dumas, who grew up in Cape Town when apartheid was at its height, before relocating in 1976 to work in Amsterdam; from the same period, the US artist Cindy Sherman, based in New York; and finally, the American Elizabeth Peyton, traveling back and forth between New York and western Europe since the 1990s.
The exhibition focuses on the artists’ gaze, on their personal concept of their surroundings that finds expression in the portraits of themselves and others. A synoptic perspective revealing how the artists’ view of their subject shifts between 1870 and the present day and what makes it significant.
The visitors will have a unique opportunity of seeing the works by Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Lotte Laserstein, Frida Kahlo, Alice Neel, Marlene Dumas, Cindy Sherman, Elizabeth Peyton united on the depiction of the human figure: through portrait, and the self-portrait.
From 1870, women made their first relevant incursions into the art world as professionals; before, women were considered Lady Painters or amateurs. The French painter Berthe Morisot and the American Mary Cassatt, both were working in Paris in the 1870s and 1880s; the German Paula Modersohn-Becker, moving in the early 1900s between Paris and the north German provincial town of Worpswede; the German Lotte Laserstein, active from 1925 to 1933 in Berlin during the later years of the Weimar Republic; Frida Kahlo, who worked from the early 1920s until around 1950 in Mexico City, during the consolidation and institutionalization of the Mexican state in the aftermath of the Revolution; the American Alice Neel, with a practice spanning the late 1920s to the 1980s, at first in Cuba and then in Manhattan; Marlene Dumas, who grew up in Cape Town when apartheid was at its height, before relocating in 1976 to work in Amsterdam; from the same period, the US artist Cindy Sherman, based in New York; and finally, the American Elizabeth Peyton, traveling back and forth between New York and western Europe since the 1990s.
The exhibition focuses on the artists’ gaze, on their personal concept of their surroundings that finds expression in the portraits of themselves and others. A synoptic perspective revealing how the artists’ view of their subject shifts between 1870 and the present day and what makes it significant.
Gallery
