Classical Modernism

The early twentieth century ushered in major transformations across all aspects of life, including the world of art. In Paris, the work of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque was revolutionizing visual representation. Working in close exchange, they departed from the traditional approach to painting using a single perspective. Instead, they broke down objects into many facets, creating a dynamic sense of space. Figures, objects, or interior spaces became recognizable only through isolated visual cues—a moustache here, a violin there. The interlocking planes and sharp edges of this new style gave rise to the term “cubism”. In contrast to their muted shades of brown and gray and complex compositions, which focused on new modes of representation in painting, Robert Delaunay’s work advanced the vibrant vision of a new technological age. His paintings celebrated urban electrification, the first flight across the English Channel, the Eiffel Tower, and, along with these innovations, the power of color.

The upheavals of the twentieth century are inscribed in several of Fernand Léger’s outstanding works on display here. They were originally owned by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the German-born art dealer who was arguably the most important early supporter of cubism. He represented Léger in Paris, alongside notable artists such as Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, all working in the cubist style of painting that broke down forms into geometric shapes and multiple perspectives. Among the works Kahnweiler owned is the iconic Woman in Blue. However, with the outbreak of the First World War, the French government confiscated Kahnweiler’s gallery holdings, which were eventually auctioned off in 1921.

Raoul La Roche, a banker born in Basel, seized this opportunity to make extensive purchases. Advised by the Swiss architect Le Corbusier and the French painter Amédée Ozenfant, he began to assemble his own art collection in the early 1920s. The fact that many important cubist works are today united in the collection of Kunstmuseum Basel is largely due to three generous donations La Roche made, starting in 1952.

Following the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933, art and culture were systematically appropriated for propaganda purposes. In 1937, thousands of artworks that failed to conform to the prescribed ideology were denounced as “degenerate” and removed from German museums. The most prominent of these confiscated pieces were sold abroad in 1939.

In the summer of 1939, the Kunstmuseum used state funds secured at short notice to acquire a total of twenty-one major modernist artworks that had originally belonged to German museum collections, some of which are presented in this room. However, the budget available was insufficient to cover the cost of all the paintings initially requested for inspection. As a result, in 1941, several works had to be returned; two of them are considered lost today.

The acquisition of “degenerate” art became the cornerstone of the Kunstmuseum’s now world-renowned modern art collection. It also marked a pivotal and highly controversial chapter in its history. It was this transaction with a dictatorial regime that ultimately safeguarded irreplaceable artworks for future generations. In 2022, Kunstmuseum Basel dedicated a comprehensive exhibition and publication project, Castaway Modernism, to these events.

In the early twentieth century, many artists across Europe began to distort form and intensify color to convey emotions and psychological states. This artistic approach, known as expressionism, enabled a deeply subjective view of the world. A key work demonstrating this style is Franz Marc’s Animal Destinies. With its vivid, clashing colors and collapsing forms surrounding defenseless animals, the painting evokes violence and vulnerability, and it proved to be eerily prophetic. Just a few years after painting it, Marc lost his life in the First World War—an event that would come to frame the painting’s meaning for many viewers. When Animal Destinies was scheduled to be shown in a memorial exhibition, disaster struck: a fire broke out in a storage facility, destroying the right third of the canvas. In response, Marc’s close friend and fellow artist, Paul Klee, took up the brush. Rather than attempting a seamless repair, Klee painted the damaged area in darker tones, leaving his intervention deliberately visible. His act preserved the integrity of the painting as a testament to loss—of the work itself and the artist who created it.

Several notable artists emerged from the Giacometti family, which hailed from the idyllic Bergell valley in the southern Swiss Canton of Graubünden. The works of three of them, Augusto, Giovanni, and Alberto Giacometti, who each pursued a distinct artistic path, are presented together here. Their artworks offer a glimpse of the vibrant diversity in art production during the first half of the twentieth century.

On a canvas primed white, Augusto Giacometti painted the majestic mountain slopes of his homeland, adorning them with conifers that resemble the elegant lines of art nouveau. In May Morning, he created a sparkling spring ambiance through the careful application of dabs of color—a technique that anticipated the emergence of abstract painting in Europe.

Giovanni, a second cousin of Augusto, depicted his young models radiant with expressionist color and set against the ancestral landscape. His son, Alberto, settled in Paris, where his early sculptures reflected the influences of cubism and surrealism. After the Second World War, Alberto Giacometti achieved lasting recognition for his elongated, slender figures that speak to the fragility of life. Despite his status in the artworld, he remained deeply connected to his family and the Bergell valley.

One of the most significant expansions in the long history of the Kunstmuseum’s collection was driven by friendship, love, and the innovative spirit of a private collector and art patron. After visiting an exhibition of constructivist art at the nearby Kunsthalle Basel in 1937, Marguerite Hagenbach acquired a work by László Moholy-Nagy and Animated Circle Picture by Sophie Taeuber-Arp. These early purchases marked the beginning of Hagenbach’s lifelong engagement with avant-garde abstraction. Hagenbach, who was born in Basel, had been friends with Sophie Taeuber-Arp and her husband, artist Hans Arp, since the early 1930s. Following Taeuber-Arp’s tragic death in 1943, she supported Hans Arp in maintaining his artistic practice during a difficult time and the couple married in 1959. Marguerite Arp-Hagenbach’s collection offers insight into the variety of abstract art produced in Paris between the 1930s and the 1950s. It eventually comprised nearly 1,000 items—paintings, sculptures, and works on paper. In 1968, she donated 290 of these artworks to Kunstmuseum Basel, a gesture that fundamentally shaped the museum’s holdings of twentieth-century abstraction and ensured international visibility for many of the artists she supported.