Northern Lights

Exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, 26 January -25 May 2025,
then at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, 1 August 2025 -12 January 2026

The fascination of the North continues unabated: the forests stretching as far as the eye can see, the radiant light of endless summer days, the long winter nights and natural phenomena such as the Northern Lights have given rise to a specifically Nordic style of modern painting that still exerts a particular fascination and appeal today.

This exhibition catalogue is devoted to this worldwide phenomenon, featuring landscape paintings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from Scandinavia, Finland and Canada. As well as works by famous painters such as Edvard Munch, Akseli Gallen-Kallela and Hilma af Klint, it also presents paintings by artists who are highly respected in their home countries but who, unfairly, have remained virtually unknown in Central Europe until now. The Nordic pictorial worlds of Harald Sohlberg, Gustaf Fjæstad, Emily Carr, Tom Thomson and Prince Eugen of Sweden are finally presented to a wide audience.