Piet Mondrian had a decisive influence on the development of painting from figuration to abstraction. On the occasion of his 150th birthday, Mondrian Evolution is dedicated to his multifaceted work and artistic development. Initially working in the tradition of Dutch landscape painting of the late 19th century, Symbolism and Cubism subsequently took on great significance for him. It was not until the early 1920s that the artist focused on a wholly non-representational pictorial vocabulary, limited to the rectangular arrangement of black lines with surfaces in white and the primary colors blue, red and yellow. In separate chapters, this path is traced through motifs such as windmills, dunes, and the sea, farms reflected in the water, and plants in various forms of abstraction.

This exhibition celebrates the historic moment in the history of modern art when Kazimir Malevich debuted his new non-objective paintings under the banner of Suprematism and Vladimir Tatlin introduced his revolutionary counter-relief sculptures. They were bitter rivals and diametrically opposed in their creative thinking, so when an exhibition in which their new works appeared, entitled 0,10: The Last Futurist Exhibition of Painting and organized by fellow artist Ivan Puni in Petrograd in 1915, the other 12 artists in the show chose sides. It was a stylistically diverse exhibition, with cubist-inspired works and the first non-objective paintings and reliefs. The Beyeler's presentation will include a large number of the works from the original exhibition. The catalogue will include essays by exhibition curator Matthew Drutt and other leading scholars, as well as documents gathered together and translated for the first time. (German edition ISBN 978-3-7757-4032-6) Ausstellung/Exhibition: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel 4.10.2015-17.1.2016

Edward Hopper's world-famous paintings articulate an idiosyncratic view of modern life. With his impressive subjects, independent pictorial vocabulary, and virtuoso play of colors, Hopper continues to influence to this day the image of the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. He began his career as an illustrator and became famous around the globe for his oil paintings. They testify to his great interest in the effects of color and his mastery in depicting light and shadow. The Fondation Beyeler is devoting its large exhibition in the spring of 2020 to Hopper's iconic images of the vast American landscape. The catalogue gathers together all of the paintings, watercolors, and drawings from the 1910s to the 1960s on display in the exhibition, and supplements them with essays focused on the subject of depicting landscape.

He was one of the last great court artists and at the same time a significant trailblazer for modern art: Francisco de Goya. The Fondation Beyeler is preparing one of the most extensive exhibitions of his work outside of Spain. In his more than sixty-year-long career, Goya was an astute observer of the drama of reason and irrationality, of dreams and nightmares. His pictures show things that go beyond social conventions: he depicts saints and criminals, witches and demons, breaking open the gates to realms where the boundaries between reality and fantasy blur. The show gathers more than seventy paintings, around sixty masterful drawings, and a selection of prints that invite the viewer to an encounter with the beautiful, as well as the incomprehensible. The extensive catalogue examines Goya's unique artistic impact in texts by renowned interpreters, and splendid photo galleries.

The first African-American artist to attain art superstardom, Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988) created a huge oeuvre of drawings and paintings (Julian Schnabel recalls him once accidentally leaving a portfolio of about 2,000 drawings on a subway car) in the space of just eight years. Through his street roots in graffiti, Basquiat helped to establish new possibilities for figurative and expressionistic painting, breaking the white male stranglehold of Conceptual and Minimal art, and foreshadowing, among other tendencies, Germany's" Junge Wilde" movement. It was not only Basquiat's art but also the details of his biography that made his name legendary--his early years as "Samo" (his graffiti artist moniker), his friendships with Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Madonna and his tragically early death from a heroin overdose. This superbly produced retrospective publication assesses Basquiat's luminous career with commentary by, among others, Glenn O'Brien, and 160 color reproductions of the work.
Jean-Michel Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a Puerto Rican mother and a Haitian father--an ethnic mix that meant young Jean-Michel was fluent in French, Spanish and English by the age of 11. In 1977, at the age of 17, Basquiat took up graffiti, inscribing the landscape of downtown Manhattan with his signature "Samo." In 1980 he was included in the landmark group exhibition "The Times Square Show"; the following year, at the age of 21, Basquiat became the youngest artist ever to be invited to Documenta. By 1982, Basquiat had befriended Andy Warhol, later collaborating with him; Basquiat was much affected by Warhol's death in 1987. He died of a heroin overdose on August 22, 1988, at the age of 27.