When Hauser & Wirth opens its 18th exhibition space on June 1, it will do so with an art-historical deep dive, not with an exhibition for a much younger star. The first show will feature a small selection of works by Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi, who was active during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The gallery is billing the exhibition as the first in Switzerland for the artist, who died in 1916.
Hammershøi, who was born in 1864 and was based in Copenhagen for the majority of his career, is best-known for his interiors and portraits, which draw from influences like Old Masters, in particular Vermeer. His interior scenes often convey a sense of eerie stillness, as though the artist had labored to capture the scene when the light in the room was just right; he often painted the same room several times over. Hammershøi treated his portraits of people in a similar way, even when it came to his self-portraits. The people in these pictures always appear to be caught off guard, interrupted mid-thought.
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Titled “Silence” and curated by art historian Felix Krämer, the Hauser & Wirth exhibition will bring together 18 paintings by the artist from private collections. Several of those works have rarely ever been exhibited to the public. Presented as a “cabinet-like exhibition,” according to the gallery, the show will include works made between 1883 to 1914.
“It has been a long-held dream to present this truly exceptional artist [Hammershøi] whose lineage situates him as a kindred spirit to Johannes Vermeer, Giorgio Morandi, Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth,” Hauser & Wirth senior director Carlo Knöll said in a statement. “Hammershøi’s work reveals a remarkably modernist sensibility that continues to garner new generations of followers who join those steeped in the history of art of the 19th and early 20th Centuries.”
Hauser & Wirth, which started out in nearby Zurich in 1992, announced last September that it would set up shop in Basel, marking its fifth gallery space in Switzerland but its first in the city where the world’s top art fair takes place each June. With this expansion the gallery would take over the current space of Galerie Knöll, whose founder, Carlo Knöll, joined the gallery as senior director.
With a focus on secondary market sales, Knöll has a history of showing artists whose work has receded into the annals of art history and shining a light on them anew. Among the solo shows he mounted for historical artists include Christian Friedrich Gille (in 2018), Antonio Calderara (2020), Rudolf Maeglin (2021) and Verena Loewensberg (2019), whose work is currently the subject of a solo at Hauser & Wirth’s Upper East Side space. (He also showed a number of Neo-Expressionists, like Per Kirkeby, Markus Lüpertz, and A. R. Penck.)
Hauser & Wirth’s Basel space will build on this exhibition history, with the Hammershøi show being the first of several historical outings to be mounted there. “Opening this space in the cultural heart of Basel will allow for intimate encounters with art of an extraordinary calibre,” Hauser & Wirth cofounder and president Iwan Wirth said in a statement. “Since we opened our very first space in Zurich in 1992, we have always sought to create a dialogue between artists of different eras. Hammershøi possessed a powerfully prescient vision and his art remains as vital and relevant today as when it was created.”