Fondation Beyeler – författare

American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) quickly became one of art history’s most luminescent personalities; his friendships with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, and Madonna, as well as his tragic death at the age of twenty-seven, are the stuff of legend. This retrospective publication traces the artist’s unique career and pinpoints his important position in art history. Basquiat’s works are marked by the kind of intensity and energy that also determined the course of his brief life. In just eight years—comparable to the career of Egon Schiele—Basquiat not only managed to create an extensive oeuvre, but also to establish new figurative and expressive elements alongside Conceptual and Minimal Art. At the age of twenty-one, he became the youngest artist ever to be invited to the documenta, while his work also anticipated that of Germany’s Junge Wilde movement and the art of the nineties. (German edition ISBN 978-3-7757-2592-7) Exhibition schedulde: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, May 9–September 5, 2010

From Rousseau to Richter, from Brancusi to Bourgeois, from Monet to Miró –this volume presents twenty-five inspiring highlights that have transformed art in innovative ways. These works were selected from the more than 400 works held in the collection of the Fondation Beyeler. Whether it is found in the radical light reflected in Monet’s water lily pond or in Warhol’s Flowers, whether it is found in Mondrian’s abstract grids or Rothko’s expressively luminous color fields, these twenty-five works attest to a visionary power reaching far beyond their present times. Such works are emblematic of the collection of modern art that has been carefully assembled by gallery owners Ernst and Hildy Beyeler and of the museum, which has become one of the most popular and successful venues in Europe since it was founded in 1997.