BERN.- Between 1830 and 1930 artists from all over Europe moved to the edges of the continent: to the island of Capri near Naples, to Skagen on the northern tip of Denmark and to Monte Verità in the Ticino. Far from the industrialised cities they sought a different life: closer to nature, closer to what they saw as ‘authentic’. The exhibition Journey into Freedom. Capri – Skagen – Monte Verità, which can be seen in the Kunstmuseum Bern from 30 October 2026 until 31 January 2027, follows this longing. Around sixty outstanding works, many of which have never been shown in Switzerland before, show both the utopian idyll and the sobering reality of everyday life.

In the early years of the 19th century, the technical inventions of the industrial revolution marked the transition from an agrarian to an industrial society, and introduced a profound social transformation in Europe. The steam engine, electrical technology and the railway led to a universal acceleration, products were made in factories rather than workshops, life in the country and in small towns made way for life in the cities. A small group of people, many of them artists and intellectuals, felt alienated in a disenchanted world informed by bourgeois constraints. They fled into alternative worlds where they hoped to find simpler and freer ways of life. The exhibition Journey into Freedom. Capri – Skagen – Monte Verità presents three such places of longing.

Utopia and reality

In the 19th century, Capri, Skagen and Monte Verità were barely frequented, and the few foreigners who ventured there were able to live outside social control. Beyond art, this meant that alternative lifestyles and social utopias could be tried out, subjects such as women’s emancipation, queer identity and a connection with nature moved into the centre, and a freer sexuality and more diverse gender roles could be explored.

The exhibition follows this artistic experiment and the yearnings associated with it. But it also emphatically shows the friction between utopia and reality: idyllic and idealised representations of landscape and people are juxtaposed with sobering naturalistic scenes from the everyday lives of the local population: fishermen who risk their lives, hard-working women, children and old people, poverty. Thus, specific local qualities become just as much apparent as the themes and motifs present in all three places.

Utopia and reality

Capri, Skagen and Monte Verità are all distinguished by particular lighting conditions and a proximity to water. At the same time, Capri and Skagen are opposite poles to one another: in Capri, with its warm light and ancient Roman ruins, artists from Northern Europe sought a legendary Arcadia – not only as an idyll for shepherds, but as a place of ecstasy, physicality and unleashed joie de vivre. For them, Capri provided scope for new ways of living that were pursued elsewhere: women painted and travelled independently, men loved men. Juxtaposed with them were the fishermen who cast their nets, pulled them out, mended them and cast them again. Although the growing tourism brought money, it did not eradicate poverty; it only made it more picturesque. Hence, alongside intensely coloured landscapes, the exhibition also features depictions of orange-pickers and agricultural labourers.

Until 1871, Skagen, where the North Sea and the Baltic meet, could only be reached by ship or via a field path, and after that by a narrow-gauge railway. Life in the poor fishing village was characterised by hard work, constant danger on the sea and the wind-lashed landscape. In this wild terrain, with its spectacular light, artists felt close to the elements. Aside from this experience of nature, they longed for ‘authenticity’ – unfiltered life. Portraits of fisherfolk and intimate scenes from everyday and family life provide impressive testimony to this.

Monte Verità is the youngest of the three colonies, and acts as a bridge between the poles of north and south: it is the stage for the back-to-nature Lebensreform movement. Around 1900, the founders of Monte Verità strove for a radical renewal of the relationship between humanity and nature, for the dissolution of the individual into the community and hence for a free, ideal and creative society. The works in this context are intensely colourful, expressionistic and partially abstract. They tell stories of escapes and new beginnings.

The exhibition invites the viewer to discover these fascinating places with all their contradictions through the eyes of the artists.