PRESENTATION: Jean Michel Basquiat-Engadin

Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work explored his mixed African, Latinx, and American heritage through a visual vocabulary of personally resonant signs, symbols, and figures, and his art developed rapidly in scale, scope, and ambition as he moved from the street to the gallery. Much of his work referenced the distinction between wealth and poverty, and reflected his unique position as a working-class person of color within the celebrity art world.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Hauser & Wirth Gallery Archive

Exploring various artistic motifs that combine the natural and cultural landscape of the Engadin in Switzerland with the metropolis of New York, Jean-Michel Basquiat’s exhibition “Engadin” is dedicated to the paintings he created in and inspired by his visits to Switzerland and traces his connections to the country, which began in 1982 with his first show (11/9-9/10/1982) at Galerie Bruno Bischofberger in Zurich, returning over a dozen times to St. Moritz, Zurich, and Appenzell, as well as other places in Switzerland. 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 through the lens of his highly distinctive and personal artistic language. Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1960 and coming of age in the downtown, post-punk artistic scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Basquiat drew on the diversity and intensity of New York City within his multi-disciplinary practice. His expressive paintings combined bold text and imagery from his expansive references across art, film, history and music, as well as his experiences of everyday racism as a young Black man in the USA. After his first exhibition with Galerie Bruno Bischofberger in 1982, the same year Basquiat became one of the youngest ever artists to participate at Documenta in Kassel, the influences of the disparate cultural landscapes of New York City and Switzerland began to take shape in his work, incorporating the motifs of ski lifts, fir trees, mountains and German phrases into his expansive visual lexicon. ‘From then on, Jean-Michel Basquiat often visited me in Switzerland, where he particularly liked it. About half a dozen times in Zurich and exactly seven times in St. Moritz, four of them in the summer’, says Bischofberger. Basquiat was captivated by the Engadin’s vast natural landscape, cultural history and the hospitality of the Bischofberger family. One of the earliest works on view in the exhibition is the monumental painting “The Dutch Settlers” (1982). Composed of nine canvases, the painting is a prime example of Basquiat’s innovative approach of marrying William S. Burroughs’ ‘cut-up’ technique with a method akin to sampling technology used in hip hop. The montage of nine canvas panels enabled Basquiat to assemble, combine and recombine different image fields – creating a multi-layered work that emanates a visual rhythm. The artist paints powerful motifs which reference the African Diaspora and alongside images of the Engadin, depicting fir trees, a mountain road, as well as an ibex, the heraldic animal of the canton of Graubünden and native to the region. This mountain iconography can also be seen in the playful works “Skifahrer” and “See (Lake)” on view in the exhibition. The former depicts a comic-like figure on a bright red background and the latter the local landscape at night, both painted in St. Moritz a year later. These works were part of a series that Basquiat made for a dinner with collectors in Bischofberger’s “hunting lodge” as the artist called it, meaning the family’s home in St. Moritz. Beside photographs of the Engadin by Albert Steiner, there was no modern art hanging in the dining room that season. In the winter of 1983/1984, during one of Basquiat’s visits to the Engadin, Bischofberger and the artist began discussing the idea for a collaboration between Basquiat, Andy Warhol and Francesco Clemente. The three artists each created four paintings and a drawing, which were subsequently transported between them to complete. “In Bianco” (1983) showcases the clearly distinguishable artistic contributions from all three, demonstrating how each artist reacted respectfully to the parameters of the others. Integrating the immediate world around him with his varied encyclopaedic knowledge, “Big Snow” (1984) sees Basquiat once again processing his impressions of the Engadin in conjunction with themes relating to race and Black history, combining motifs of the Swiss mountains, snow and skiing with the Berlin Olympic Games of 1936 and Jesse Owens’ win of four gold medals. In 1985, Basquiat would go on to be part of a group show at the Segantini Museum in St. Moritz, showcasing his work “‘See (Lake)” (1983) in an exhibition titled “The Engadine in Painting”. The latest body of work on view includes a group of monochrome paintings titled “To Repel Ghosts” which Basquiat created in 1986 during his time in Zurich and St. Moritz, exploring themes of emptiness as well as spirituality in relation to the African Diaspora. Musing on what kept drawing the artist back to Switzerland, Buchhart writes, ‘For Basquiat, the Engadin meant work, inspiration, friendship, and rest and relaxation, all at the same time.’

Photo: Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Dutch Settlers, 1982, Acrylic and oilstick on canvas, 183 x 549 cm / 72 x 216 1/8 in, Courtesy Nicola Erni Collection © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York, Photo: Felix Jungo Photography

Info: Hauser & Wirth Gallery, Via Serlas 22, St. Moritz, Switzerland, Duration: 14/12/2024-29/3/2025, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-19:00, www.hauserwirth.com/