From December 14, 2024 until March 29, 2025 and thanks to curator and writer Dieter Buchhart, the art gallery Hauser & Wirth St. Moritz in Switzerland is presenting the intimate show Jean-Michel Basquiat: Engadin.
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Jean-Michel Basquiat: Engadin is the first solo exhibition dedicated to works created by the artist both in and about Switzerland. Jean-Michel Basquiat first visited the country in 1982 for his first show at Galerie Bruno Bischofberger in Zurich. According to art critic Michel Nuridsany, during his short lifetime (1960-1988), the artist traveled a total of fifteen times to Switzerland, the last visit took place in 1986. He stayed in various cities, including St. Moritz, Zurich and Appenzell.
The Engadin region in particular continued to fascinate Basquiat long after his return to New York, resulting in a body of work that captures his impressions of the Swiss Alpine landscape and culture. All of this was made possible thanks to the unique and visionary relationship between the artist and his gallerist.
In his catalogue Forword, Iwan Wirth writes that Basquiat’s time in Switzerland continued to echo even after the artist’s return to the United States, where his works made in New York include references to, among others things, Swiss bratwurst and German phrases.
In his Forword, Bruno Bischofberger notes that the exhibition is being held at the very same place in St. Moritz where, many years ago, he was the first to run a gallery. In May 1982, Bruno Bischofberger became Jean-Michel’s exclusive worldwide dealer, until the artist’s death in 1988.
During Jean-Michel Basquiat’s many visits to Switzerland, Bruno Bischofberger showed everything that was important to the artist, who had an insatiable curiosity. He absorbed everything that was new to him. He was especially interested in art, including his art dealers various collections. In addition to visual art, Bruno Bischofberger collected photography and design; folk art, from both an artistic and an ethnographic point of view, made in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, and the other Alpine countries; and prehistoric stone objects from all over the world. In addition, Jean-Michel showed a strong interest in Swiss history, cultural traditions, all kinds of music as well as food and wine. It didn’t take long before he knew a great deal about all of it.
Bruno Bischofberger underlines that he himself learned a lot from the artist. On his first visit to Basquiat’s studio-apartment in New York City, he asked him which artists had impressed and perhaps influenced him the most. The first thing Jean-Michel Basquiat said was: “Works by very young children.”
In his catalogue essay, the St. Moritz exhibition curator Dieter Buchhart underlines that Jean-Michel Basquiat was enamored with the mountains, the ibexes, the ski lifts, the bratwurst, and the hospitality of the Bischofberger family.
Dieter Buchhart stresses that, with his symbolically laden, furiously executed, and highly complex works, Basquiat took New York’s art world by storm. In 1982, he became one of the youngest artists ever to participate in the influential international exhibition Documenta. He quickly became recognized as a key influence on and decisive innovator of the art of the 1980s. His influence continues to reverberate until today. In less than a decade, Jean-Michel Basquat created around one thousand paintings, including over 160 joint works with Andy Warhol, as well as over two thousand drawings.
Dieter Buchhart notes that drawing was always the foundation of Basquiat’s artistic practice, though letters, words, lists, and phrases are often an integral part of his art. He quotes the art critic Klaus Kertess who stressed about Basquiat: “In the beginning of his creation, there was the word. He loved words for their sense, for their sound, and for their look; he gave eyes, ears, mouth—and soul—to words.”
Regarding the year 1982, Dieter Buchhart writes that certain factors clearly shaped Basquiat: the variety and intensity of the New York art world and its museums, the everyday racism he was confronted with, his urban environment, and the African diaspora. In addition, the influences of both the Engadin’s unique landscape and the Bischofberger family were also reflected in his works. The curator notes the contrast between the pulsating life, nightclubs, street noise, and breakneck speed of the artist’s native New York City and Basquiat’s “discovery of slowness” in the unique, awe-inspiring landscape of the Engadin region.
According to Dieter Buchhart, these Swiss influences are unmistakable already visibly in Basquat’s monumental major work The Dutch Settlers (1982), consisting of nine canvases, combining a wide range of cutting-edge elements.
Within The Dutch Settlers, Basquiat creates one of his significant spaces of knowledge (Wissensräume), reflecting the field of tension of concrete poetry, the “cut-up” technique of Beat writer William S.Burroughs, and the speak-singing rap (Sprechgesang) of hip-hop. According to Dieter Buchhart, Basquiat distilled not only language but his entire surroundings and humankind’s collective memory and knowledge.
The combination of pentimento, acrylic paint, and oil stick in The Dutch Settlers results in a form of painted hip-hop. It shows how Basquiat’s knowledge-based artistic strategies raised the same sort of questions that would come to shape the contextual art of the 1990s and the present, rather than exploring the formal and stylistic issues related to the Neo-expressionism of the 1980s.
Still according to the curator, Baquiat creates a space of knowledge with an internal logic that can unlock new spaces of thought for the viewer. Creating such “montages” of canvases opened up yet another innovative avenue, allowing Basquiat to assemble various visual fields by combining and recombining the paintings—literally, by sampling them. As an example, Dieter Buchhart mentions Flesh and Spirit (1982–83). He also underlines that, with his works, Basquiat fought against exploitation, consumer society, oppression, racism and police violence.
In his essay, Dieter Buchhart offers information on the various works of art created by Basquiat across different visits to Switzerland as well as on works inspired by his Swiss stays. The Dutch Settlers is just one work mentioned as an example. The curator also describes Basquiat’s first encounter with Bruno Bischofberger, which took place in late 1981, when the art dealer was visiting Annina Nosei Gallery in New York City; Annina was Basquiat’s first art dealer. In addition, the catalogue contains a useful chronology of Bruno Bischofberger’s encounters, meetings and trips with Basquiat from spring 1981 until November 1986.
Accept cookies — we receive a commission; price unchanged — and order the catalogue Jean-Michel Basquiat: Engadin (Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2025, 76 pages, ISBN 978-3-907493-02-1) from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Brook Bartlett and Bruno Bischofberger at the Cresta Klubhaus in St. Moritz on January 30, 1983. Photography by Christina Bischofberger © photo copyright Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Männedorf-Zurich, Switzerland.
For a better reading, quotations and partial quotations in this Jean-Michel Basquiat. Engadin exhibition and catalogue review have not been put between quotation marks.
Jean-Michel Basquiat. Engadin exhibition and catalogue review added on March 13, 2025 at 14:48 Swiss time.
