Kunstmuseum Basel

Profile

The Kunstmuseum Basel houses the Galerie (Gallery) and the Kupferstichkabinett (Department of Prints and Drawings). The main focus is on paintings and drawings by artists active in the Upper Rhine region between 1400 and 1600 and of the 19th and 21st century.

The Kunstmuseum Basel possesses the world`s largest collection of works by the Holbein family. Further examples of Renaissance art include major pieces by masters such as Konrad Witz , Martin Schongauer , Lucas Cranach the Elder and Mathias Grünewald . Most of these early treasures originally belonged to the collection of a Basel lawyer, Basilius Amerbach. Purchased by the city in 1661, they formed the core of the world`s first public municipal museum.

Paintings by Basel-born Arnold Böcklin feature among the 19th-century highlights. In the field of 20th-century art, the accent is on Cubism (Picasso, Braque, Léger), German Expressionism, Abstract Expressionism and American art since 1950. Contemporary art is exhibited at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst (Museum of Contemporary Art).

represented artists

Carl Andre      Jean Arp      Richard Artschwager      John Baldessari      Max Beckmann      Joseph Beuys      Arnold Böcklin      Pierre Bonnard      Constantin Brancusi      Georges Braque      Christoph Büchel      Alexander Calder      Marc Chagall      Eduardo Chillida      Lovis Corinth      Lucas Cranach      Salvador Dalí      Giorgio de Chirico      Robert Delaunay      André Dérain      Otto Dix      Jean Dubuffet      Raoul Dufy      Max Ernst      Jan Fabre      Lyonel Feininger      Lucio Fontana      Sam Francis      Alberto Giacometti      Juan Gris      Mathias Grünewald      Al Held      Alexej von Jawlensky      Jasper Johns      Donald Judd      Wassily Kandinsky      Ernst Ludwig Kirchner      Paul Klee      Franz Kline      Oskar Kokoschka      Henri Laurens      Le Corbusier      Fernand Léger

Roy Lichtenstein      Jacques Lipchitz      Richard Long      August Macke      Kazimir Malevich      Franz Marc      Henri Matisse      Mario Merz      Paula Modersohn-Becker      Amedeo Modigliani      Laszló Moholy-Nagy      Piet Mondrian      Robert Motherwell      Edvard Munch      Barnett Newman      Kenneth Noland      Emil Nolde      Claes Oldenburg      Meret Oppenheim      Amédée Ozenfant      Antoine Pevsner      Pablo Picasso      Jackson Pollock      Robert Rauschenberg      Dieter Roth      Mark Rothko      Georges Rouault      Egon Schiele      Oskar Schlemmer      Martin Schongauer      Kurt Schwitters      Louis Soutter      Clyfford Still      Sophie Taeuber-Arp      Yves Tanguy      Antoni Tàpies      Jean Tinguely      Mark Tobey      Theo van Doesburg      Georges Vantongerloo      Konrad Witz