To mark the bicentennial of Arnold Böcklin’s birth, the Kunstmuseum Basel is dedicating a major exhibition to the renowned Swiss artist, running from September 4, 2027, to January 23, 2028. Curated by Eva Reifert, the exhibition will feature approximately 150 works, offering an in-depth overview of the oeuvre of one of the most important and original figuresin 19th-century Swiss art. The exhibition is an event of exceptional significance, particularly because all four surviving versions of *The Isle of the Dead*—now housed in Basel, Berlin, Leipzig, and New York—will be brought together for the first time for this occasion.
This is an extraordinary and unlikely-to-be-repeated event: three of the paintings will, in fact, leave their respective collections exclusively for this exhibition. Not even Arnold Böcklin ever had the chance to see all four works together. The artist created a total of five versions of the famous subject between 1880 and 1886, but one of them—the fourth—was destroyed during World War II.
The first version of the work is now housed at the Kunstmuseum Basel, which holds the most significant collection of Böcklin’s works. The opportunity to view all four versionsof *The Isle of the Dead* simultaneously will allow visitors to compare their characteristics, highlighting both the common elements and the differences between the individual versions. The comparison will also provide insight into the genesis of the image and the context in which one of the most famous motifs of European Symbolism was created.
Born in Basel on October 19, 1827, and died in Fiesole in 1901, Arnold Böcklin was a painter, sculptor, and inventor who distinguished himself through a body of work characterized by a strong visionary element. His paintings are characterized by intense colors, mythological creatures, enigmatic and unsettling landscapes, and evocative portraits. His art constantly oscillates between reality and imagination, which is why the artist became a leading figure in the Symbolist movement of the second half of the 19th century.
The exhibition was conceived by the Kunstmuseum Basel and organized in collaboration withthe Alte Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. After the Swiss exhibition concludes, the four works will cross the Atlantic to take center stage in a subsequent presentation in the United States, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel thus promises to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to rediscover Arnold Böcklin and his artistic universe, but above all to witness an unprecedented comparison of the four surviving versions of one of the most enigmatic and evocative paintings in the history of art.
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| The four existing versions of Arnold Böcklin's *The Isle of the Dead* are on display together for the first time in Basel |
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