VILHELM HAMMERSHØI

The exhibition is the first in the gallery’s new space in Basel’s historic central cultural district, directed by Carlo Knöll. Based in Basel, Knöll joined Hauser & Wirth as Senior Director in September 2023 and brings his expertise of modern and historical masters in the secondary market to the gallery. ‘Vilhelm Hammershøi. Silence’ will be accompanied by a catalogue by Hauser & Wirth Publishers, featuring essays from the curator Dr. Felix Krämer and art historian and writer Florian Illies (author of ‘Love in a Time of Hate’ and ‘1913: The Year Before the Storm’).

Born in 1864, Hammershøi’s timeless paintings defy categorization, visually bridging the art of the Old Masters with that of the modern era. His remarkably modernist sensibility continues to capture the imaginations of contemporary audiences from beyond his native Denmark, with major international retrospectives and exhibitions over the last 20 years, including shows at The Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK (2008), Kunsthalle München, Munich, Germany (2012) and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, Japan (2020).

The son of a merchant, Hammershøi remained loyal to his hometown of Copenhagen. Through his travels to the European centers of Paris and London, he familiarized himself with the rapidly evolving international art of his time. However, his painting and drawing practice found inspiration in Dutch 17th-century genre painting, particularly the mysterious domestic interiors of Johannes Vermeer, and in the 19th-century Danish Golden Age, creating a highly individual artistic language. The interior world of the apartments he and his wife, Ida Ilsted, occupied in Copenhagen, each depiction imbued with a contemplative stillness, were to remain the artist’s enduring fascination.

The exhibition in Basel shows the breadth and depth of the artist’s practice through works dating from 1883 to 1914. Alongside the interior paintings for which Hammershøi is highly renowned, the exhibition features a number of the artist’s early farmstead paintings and cityscapes of Copenhagen and London, alongside a rare self-portrait of the artist titled Double Portrait of the Artist and His Wife, Seen through a Mirror. The Cottage Spurveskjul (1911). A further nine exemplary interior paintings featuring an isolated female figure are on view, including major paintings of the artist’s wife such as ‘Interior with a Standing Woman’ (1898) and ‘Woman Before a Mirror’ (1906). Characterised by their mesmerising composure and omnipresent minimal colour palette, ‘Vilhelm Hammershøi. Silence’ devotes its attention to these genre paintings without narratives. Their quiet but radical originality situates the artist as a powerful precursor to the modern masters who were to follow.