The Fondation Beyeler will present a new group show, “Northern Lights,” focussing on around 70 landscape paintings by artists from Scandinavia and Canada created between 1880 and 1930, among them masterpieces by Hilma af Klint and Edvard Munch. These artists all share the boreal forest as a common source of inspiration. The seemingly boundless expanses of the forest, the radiant light of endless summer days, the long winter nights, and natural phenomena such as the northern lights gave rise to a specifically Nordic way of modern painting that to this day exerts enduring appeal and fascination. The boreal forest, which stretches south and north of the polar circle, forming one of Earth’s largest primeval forests, was increasingly represented as a spiritual landscape.
The exhibition will be the first of its kind in Europe in terms of the constellation of works on display. It will provide an opportunity to trace the development of Nordic landscape painting in modern art through selected works by Helmi Biese, Anna Boberg, Emily Carr, Prince Eugen, Gustaf Fjæstad, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Lawren S. Harris, Hilma af Klint, J.E.H. MacDonald, Edvard Munch, Ivan Shishkin, Harald Sohlberg, and Tom Thomson, as well as discover artists likely still unknown to many visitors.
The Fondation Beyeler has also commissioned contemporary Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen (*1987) to create a new digital installation, which will premiere alongside the exhibition “Northern Lights.” In “Boreal Dreams,” the artist explores the effects of the climate crisis on the ecosystem of the boreal zone by conceiving virtual worlds based on scientific data collected through field work and on gaming technology.

Website
fondationbeyeler.ch/en/exhibitions/northern-lights

Where
Fondation Beyeler
Baselstrasse 101
4125 Riehen

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