Anita Haldemann – författare

German edition Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) was a pioneer of post-war American art. Her experimental work with paint and canvas made her one of the most significant artists of Abstract Expressionism. At the age of just twenty-three, she asserted herself in a male-dominated environment with the development of her trademark soak-stain technique. Her work would later serve a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Colour Field painting. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition at Kunstmuseum Basel highlights fifty years of  innovative painting, focusing especially on Frankenthaler’s intense engagement with art history. Insights into Helen Frankenthaler’s life and creative work, travels, and artistic inspirations gained by examining key works from five decadesA close look at Helen Frankenthaler’s works compared and contrasted with those of her artistic role models – including Édouard Manet, André Derain, and Marie LaurencinExhibition: Kunstmuseum Basel, New Building, April 18 to August 23, 2026

English EditionHelen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) was a pioneer of post-war American art. Her experimental work with paint and canvas made her one of the most significant artists of Abstract Expressionism. At the age of just 23, she asserted herself in a male-dominated environment and became a pioneer of colour field painting. Soon, she developed the soak-stain technique that was to become her trademark. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition at Kunstmuseum Basel highlights fifty years of innovative painting, focusing especially on Frankenthaler's intense engagement with art history. Insights into Helen Frankenthaler’s life and creative work, travels, and artistic inspirations gained by examining key works from five decadesFirst publication in which Helen Frankenthaler’s works are compared and contrasted with those of her role models – including Édouard Manet, André Derain and Marie LaurencinExhibition: Kunstmuseum Basel, New Building, April 18 to August 23, 2026

German-English edition The important, nearly forgotten German-Jewish museum expert and art collector Curt Glaser ( 879– 943) was forced to emigrate by the National Socialists and sold the majority of his art holdings in Berlin in 933. Through the whereabouts of works once owned by him, the Kunstmuseum Basel reached an agreement with Glaser's heirs that is recognized internationally as "best practice," and in connection with this is honoring Glaser's work in an exhibition. The catalogue provides richly illustrated insights into Glaser's fascinating collection, with works by Edvard Munch, Max Beckmann, and Henri Matisse. Essays link new research on this advocate of modernism and his collecting of modern art and embed his fate in current questions connected with formerly Jewish art holdings in public museums.

Discover Jasper Johns as a passionate collector of drawings! From Paul Cézanne to Pablo Picasso to Willem de Kooning – the collection of Jasper Johns offers surprising juxtapositions. The drawings’ consistently high quality is the result of his keen eye as a connoisseur, and many of the works are a testament to his friendships with other artists. In this catalogue, works by nearly fifty artists enter into an inspiring exchange that will fascinate experts and art lovers alike. Jasper Johns (b. 1930) ranks among the major American artists of the twentieth century. His accomplishments as a collector, however, have been little known until now. This beautifully produced volume features a selection of more than one hundred drawings, inviting you to dive into the richness and depth of a truly unique collection.

Luminous, large-scale paintings, fantastical, chimerical sculpture, girlish warriors, and Amazon goddesses—Leiko Ikemura’s artistic output is as diverse as it is prolific. In this book that gathers together drawings, monotypes, paintings, and sculpture, Ikemura’s unique talent for fusing Eastern and Western art is profoundly evident. In her work, Ikemura explores themes of hybridity, cross-culturalism, sexuality, and death. She works at the intersection of abstraction and figuration, shifting fluidly between media, and imbuing her pieces with raw energy and emotion. Ikemura’s exotic landscapes emerge from tempera-like washes. Her terra-cotta and bronze sculpture is both feminine and timeless and her unique pictorial language manifests itself in landscapes and figures that summon a sense of loss. Whether she’s celebrating the power of the female form or exploring a misty dreamscape, Ikemura achieves a unique synthesis of cultures, traditions, and perceptions in everything she creates.

The Swiss photographer and filmmaker Rudy Burckhardt (1914 - 1999) came via London to New York in 1935 from his Swiss home town of Basle and found himself overwhelmed by the American metropolis. "The tremendous difference in scale between the soaring buildings and the people in the street astonished me", he wrote of the city that became his home for the rest of his life. Though comparatively little known, Burckhardt is increasingly being recognized as an outstanding 20th-century photographer. His New York street scenes of the 1940s are classic. In the 1950s, Burckhardt took many portraits of artists for Art News, some of them being his friends - Willem de Kooning, Alex Katz, Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and others. Burckhardt found photography too monumental, "because when it gets printed and comes out a picture it becomes like a fact, you know". He preferred the fleetingness of a film, where "things come and go", and often used the photo and the movie camera simultaneously on his tours around the streets of New York and later the forests of Maine.