I am not an art connoisseur but I do enjoy visiting art galleries; indeed, we both do.  Whilst we were in Basel for my birthday, and as the weather turned from sun to cloud to rain, we went indoors to see the Kunstmuseum, Fondation Beyeler and the Swiss Architecture Museum.  Each was impressive in different ways and we enjoyed visiting them all very much.

The collection at the Kunstmuseum Basel is very extensive and diverse.  It is housed in three different buildings.  The first was built in the 1930’s and is a beautiful building from that era that is full of great art from the 15^th century to the middle of the 20^th century.  The colours throughout the building are subtle and earthy, and the stairwell was as impactful as some of the art.

We started gently in a side room where the curators had paired pieces from different genres and periods and exhibited them side by side.  This was in an effort to trigger new comparisons and feelings that would not be prompted if the works were seen alone.  I didn’t always see the connections in the pairings but some were more obvious and fun to spot. 

We both spent more time upstairs amid works from the early 20^th century.  Here too I had fun recognising some of artists before reading the explanatory captions alongside the works.  There was representation of almost every western-mainland European artist I could think of plus many I was unfamiliar with. (I only spotted two works by English and American artists).  The quality was consistently very high and here are two I particularly liked….

By the time I had finished with the 20^th century art on the first floor, I was tiring.  However, as I moved into areas showing the 15^th to 19^th century art I was revitalised again by the range and quality.  I skipped through some of the rooms displaying early religious work – although, not for the first time, I was astonished by the vibrancy of the colour given that most of these works are over half a millennium old. 

My favourite paintings in this section were one by Pieter Bruegel, whose detailed crowd scenes I always find interesting, and those by Hans Holbein (the Younger).

I slowed again as we came to the 18^th and 19^th century sections and really enjoyed painting after painting.  I especially enjoyed a room of Dutch still lives.

To be honest I thought I was done but there was still more early 20^th century art to see including a whole room dedicated to Alberto Giacometti sculptures (I hadn’t previously realised that he was Swiss!).  And this was just the first building……

The second Kunstmuseum building was built in 2016 and is a radical design resembling a slightly crumpled grey box.  Inside, the look is very contemporary with bare grey surfaces and art dating from 1950. 

Frankly, I was sated with art by this time.  I walked around the floors but found the modern art even harder to fully take in than usual, especially as not all the information was provided in English and so the backstory to the artists and work was harder to grasp.  However, I did like an Alexander Calder mobile in the entrance hall and the overall ambiance of the place.

We didn’t make it to the third Kunstmuseum building which is for temporary exhibitions.  Instead, we stopped off at the Swiss Architecture Museum.  This had a couple of ongoing exhibitions on display. 

By far the most interesting was that showing recent Swiss developments demonstrating renewal and renovation of buildings rather than their demolition and replacement.  Not only is replacement more eco-friendly but it preserves a continuum of history. This was a theme of the European Architectural Heritage Year of 1975 and the exhibition we saw was a celebration of the 50th anniversary of that event.

_{Models of Renovated/Restored Buildings On Show At The Swiss Architecture Museum}

Some of the developments portrayed were quite small – individual houses or community buildings – while others were large and included the Kongresshaus and Tonhalle in Zurich.  The museum was well worth an hour or so of our time even as laypeople in the architecture world.

Our last day in Basel was forecast to be wet and, indeed, it rained all day.  We had planned for this and set off on a tram to Fondation Beyeler a few miles outside the city.  We knew that the main art gallery – another very impressive collection apparently – was closed to visitors, but we were very keen to see the well-reviewed exhibition of art called ‘Northern Lights’.  This was focused on representations of the boreal forest around the Arctic Circle by Canadian, Scandinavian and Russian artists.

I was particularly keen to see works on show by Hilma Af Klint.  I had not heard of this Swedish artist until I heard children at a local school read about her during my volunteering to help ‘unconfident readers’.  Her two works on show here was very different from her later symbolism and portrayed the eeriness of the forest.

To be honest though, there were paintings in the exhibition that I enjoyed more and all were by artists I had never heard of before.  Both of us really enjoyed a few of the works by another Swede: Akseli Gallen-Kallela.  These were some of my favorites of his:

I also really enjoyed the last room of smaller paintings.  Several were by Canadians including Tom Thomson including one of a canoe he used to row out onto lakes and which, sadly, he ultimately disappeared in, and J. E. H. MacDonald who was originally from the UK. 

^{Paintings By Lawren Harris and J. E. H. MacDonald}

Many of the paintings in the exhibition gave a strong impression of the cold of the forest.  Apart from a couple which showed the wind in the trees, they also had a calm, silent, atmospheric quality.   

Throughout the exhibition, the presentation and the information provided was first class.  Both of us liked the fact that the explanatory captions for each art work were on the floor rather than alongside the paintings.  I wonder why this tactic isn’t employed in other galleries.

As we left Fondation Beyeler, following very tasty lunch there, we saw some filming going on in the pretty but wet gardens.  Jane overheard that it was related to the Eurovision Song Contest that was gearing up for the finals a week or so later.  I’m certainly glad our excellent, uncrowded visit to Basel didn’t happen to coincide with that!