BASEL.- At the beginning of the year, the Fondation Beyeler presents the thematic exhibition “Northern Lights”, focussing on around 70 landscape paintings by artists from the Nordic Countries and Canada created between 1880 and 1930, among them key works by Hilma af Klint and Edvard Munch. These artists all share the nature of the North, in particular the boreal forest, as a common source of inspiration. The seemingly boundless expanses of the forest, the radiant light of endless summer days, the long winter nights, and natural phenomena such as the northern lights gave rise to a specifically Nordic form of modern painting that exerts enduring appeal and fascination. “Northern Lights” features paintings by Helmi Biese, Anna Boberg, Emily Carr, Prince Eugen, Gustaf Fjæstad, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Lawren S. Harris, Hilma af Klint, J. E. H. MacDonald, Edvard Munch, Ivan Shishkin, Harald Sohlberg and Tom Thomson. While many of these artists are celebrated in their home countries, they are likely to yield fascinating new discoveries for most visitors. It is the first time an exhibition is devoted to this particular theme in Europe.

The boreal forest, also known as taiga or taiga forest, is the world’s largest primeval forest and plays a crucial role in the planet’s balance of the ecosystem. Its dense coniferous forests stretch south and north of the polar circle, covering large parts of Scandinavia, Finland, Russia and Canada. Its unfathomable uniformity and immense expanse make for an overwhelming experience. The boreal forest thus plays a dominant role in almost all the paintings in the exhibition. Only Anna Boberg and, in his later works, Lawren S. Harris painted landscapes north of the tree line, or even in the perpetual ice of the Arctic. Another element of these intense northern landscapes is water. In the paintings, the countless lakes and fjords often supply a horizontal contrast to the vertical trees of the forest and make the wind visible as it continually disturbs the water’s surface. The latter is particularly apparent in the works of Helmi Biese and Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Next to the snow, which defines the landscape’s appearance from late October into April, the light is another recurring motif: the mystical northern lights that illuminate the sky with vibrant colours, the bright summer days that never fully turn to dark, the summer solstice, and the darkness of endless winter nights. Artists perceived these natural phenomena not only as pictorial motifs but also as a vital force that significantly influenced their work. They thus not only captured what they saw, but also gave form to emotional experiences that transport the viewer into the vastness of the boreal forest and inspire reflection on the relationship between man and nature.

The unique atmosphere of the North, with its extreme climatic conditions, has fascinated and inspired artists for centuries. In the North, a youthful generation of painters developed new strategies for depicting nature. The artists featured in this exhibition share an intensity in their manner of painting that seems to mirror the intensity of the natural environments they construed as landscapes. Through vibrant colour, expressive brushwork, unconventional compositional and perspectival distortions, a psychological component, and at times the sheer size of their works, they aspired to visually capture the seasonal extremes of the natural light and the overwhelming vastness of the northern wilderness. The exhibition follows no particular chronology. Rather, individual rooms are devoted to the artists and their respective ways of approaching their natural surroundings and constructing them as a landscape, rendering a personal image of nature

Among the artists featured in the exhibition, only Edvard Munch (Norway), Akseli Gallen-Kallela (Finland) and Hilma af Klint (Sweden) enjoy international acclaim. “Northern Lights” further brings together painters who, while held in high regard in their countries of origin, would have deserved stronger international recognition. These include Helmi Biese (Finland), Harald Sohlberg (Norway), Gustaf Fjæstad, Anna Boberg and Prince Eugen (Sweden) as well as Emily Carr, Lawren S. Harris and Tom Thomson (Canada).

The painters of the North absorbed impulses from the conventions of different pictorial traditions as well as from the avant-garde trends emerging in continental Europe. Influential modern artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse helped shape modern landscape painting in the North, opening new perspectives in terms of colour, light and form. While Nordic painters embraced these ideas, they interpreted them in their own, distinctive way, developing a unique form of Northern modernism. More than a style, it embodies an ethos that celebrates inhospitable nature, along with its grandeur and its nuances.

From 1870 to 1920, Nordic painting experienced a golden age, in which a breathtaking variety of images was created. The advent of modernity was defined by a thirst for freedom, self-determination and independence, leading artists to forge new paths. A key element found especially in and Scandinavian and Finnish painting appears to be the view from above. These panoramic landscapes give the impression of having been painted with the aid of images captured by a drone. Helmi Biese, as well as Akseli Gallen- Kallela, Anna Boberg or Prince Eugen adopted this perspective, as though not only painting the landscape but actively creating it, as godlike originators of nature, instead of merely imitating it through art.

It is noticeable that the landscapes on display often depict views of nature in which humankind is only marginally present. Yet, indirectly, humans are present: for example in Edvard Munch’s landscapes of the soul, in his painted shadows or in a train’s fleeting smoke. In Gustaf Fjæstad’s panorama-like detailed view, footprints in the snow attest to the transience of human life as set against the scale of eternal nature. The absence of human presence may also be linked to northern painters’ guiding notion of having their work conjure an idealising cliché of utopian yearning for unspoilt nature.

The Buffalo AKG Art Museum played a prominent part in the history of Nordic modern art in Canada. In 1913, the museum hosted the groundbreaking exhibition “Contemporary Scandinavian Art”, which also travelled to other North American cities. For the first time in North America, works by contemporary Northern artists were on view in a large group show. Visitors to the exhibition included Canadian painters Lawren S. Harris and J. E. H. MacDonald, whose paintings are also featured in the Fondation Beyeler’s exhibition. The impressions of Northern painting they gathered in Buffalo were to have a lasting influence on the “Group of Seven”, a group of artists of which they became founding members a few years later, and which paved the way for modern painting in Canada.

The timespan under consideration not only encompasses the cultural-historical era of modernity, in which existing traditions were systematically questioned. From a geopolitical standpoint, this is also the period, in which new nation states formed in the North, accompanied by pronounced efforts to forge corresponding national identities. Artists staged the landscapes of their homelands as emblems of cultural heritage. The impressive nature motifs were often interpreted as symbols of the national soul and the connection with one's own culture.

“Northern Lights” is the latest in a long line of presentations of modern landscape painting at the Fondation Beyeler, among them exhibitions devoted to Gustave Courbet, Ferdinand Hodler, Piet Mondrian, Claude Monet and Giovanni Segantini. The Fondation Beyeler is now expanding its perspective northward, in remembrance of the fact that, back in 2007, it staged what was then the largest exhibition to date of Edvard Munch’s work outside of Norway.

The Fondation Beyeler has commissioned contemporary Danish artist Jakob Kudsk Steensen (*1987) to create a new digital installation, which will premiere alongside the exhibition. In Boreal Dreams, the artist explores the effects of the climate crisis on the ecosystem of the boreal zone by conceiving virtual landscapes based on scientific data collected through fieldwork and on gaming technology.

A richly illustrated exhibition catalogue, edited by Ulf Küster for the Fondation Beyeler and designed by Melanie Mues, Mues Design, London, is published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, Berlin. On 240 pages, it brings together essays by Katerina Atanassova, Louise Bannwarth, Helga Christoffersen, Ulf Küster, Angela Lampe and Anne-Maria Pennonen.