Il Art Museum Basel is preparing to host two major exhibitions in 2025, offering art lovers a unique opportunity to explore the lesser-known side of painting and sculpture. From 1 February 2025 to 4 January 2026, Verso. Stories of reverse will invite the public to discover the secrets hidden behind works of art from the 29th to the 10th century. From March 2025th to August XNUMXth XNUMX, instead, Medardo Rosso. The invention of modern sculpture will propose a retrospective of the Italian-French artist, a pioneer of modern sculpture.
Verso: at the Kunstmuseum, the other side of painting
Edited by Bodo Brinkmann, To is an exhibition that takes the viewer beyond the pictorial surface, revealing the lesser-known side of works of art: their backs. Normally invisible to museum visitors, the backs of paintings tell untold stories, revealing inscriptions, provenance marks, collectors’ seals, and even hidden paintings.
Through a careful selection of works by artists such as Hans Baldung Grien, Lucas Cranach the Elder and Konrad Witz, the exhibition explores the evolution of canvases and pictorial supports over the centuries. Among the most fascinating examples are the retables with doors, designed to be opened or closed depending on the liturgical period, and the panels painted on both sides, such as the one made by Ambrosius and Hans Holbein the Younger.
The aim of the exhibition is to offer a new perspective on the history of art, analyzing the path of the works before they reached museum collections and highlighting the original context in which they were used.
Medardo Rosso: Modern Sculpture Comes to Life
Curated by Heike Eipeldauer and Elena Filipovic, the retrospective dedicated to Medardo Rosso aims to restore visibility to an artist who, despite being a contemporary of Auguste Rodin and a point of reference for many subsequent sculptors, remains little known to the general public.
Born in Turin in 1858 and active between Milan and Paris, Rosso revolutionized sculpture at the end of the 50th century, abandoning rigid and monumental forms to experiment with vibrant surfaces, light effects and unusual materials. The exhibition presents about 250 sculptures in bronze, wax and plaster, alongside XNUMX photographs and drawings, which testify to his experimental and multidisciplinary approach.
Rosso considered sculpture as a process in continuous evolution, in which matter and light interact to create evanescent images. His choice of fragile and transitory materials, such as wax, reflects the desire to capture the fleetingness of the moment, approaching in some ways the Impressionists.
The importance of photography in his work is clear: Rosso not only documented his sculptures with shots that emphasized their interaction with light, but he also arranged them in installations that involved the surrounding space. This approach anticipates artistic sensibilities that developed during the twentieth century and are still influential today.
In addition to presenting a large body of work by Rosso, the exhibition establishes a dialogue with over 60 artists from subsequent eras, from Constantin Brâncuși to Louise Bourgeois, from Alberto Giacometti to Andy Warhol. The aim is to highlight the revolutionary scope of Rosso's art and its impact on modern sculpture.
The retrospective is organized in collaboration with the mumok in Vienna and includes a scientific catalogue that includes essays by important art scholars.
With these two exhibitions, the Kunstmuseum Basel confirms its position as a point of reference for those who wish to explore new perspectives on the history of art, offering immersive experiences between the visible and the invisible, the classical and the innovative.
