BASEL.- Celebrating the expansion of its ensemble throughout 2027, the Fondation Beyelerʼs exhibition programme brings together three major solo exhibitions dedicated to influential artists of the 20th and 21st centuries: Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois and Elizabeth Peyton. These exhibitions take place alongside the inaugural exhibition “Constellations", which is already unfolding across the expanded ensemble.

Exhibition programme 2027

Frida Kahlo
31 January – 17 May 2027

Early in the new year, the Fondation Beyeler will devote a major retrospective to Frida Kahlo (1907–1954). Featuring over 50 paintings, the exhibition will bring together approximately one third of her entire painted oeuvre. It will further present 15 characteristic works on paper. As the first monographic exhibition of Frida Kahlo in Switzerland, the retrospective offers both a comprehensive overview of the artistʼs work and a unique insight into an oeuvre that is rarely seen in Europe. The exhibition will trace Frida Kahloʼs artistic development from the 1920s to the 1950s. It will centre on her fascinating and self-portraits, as well as showcase her complex still lifes and striking portraits of family members and friends. Frida Kahloʼs highly expressive and distinct imagery merges life and art, tradition and innovation, as well as reality and phantasy. The exhibition offers a rare chance to encounter many of Frida Kahloʼs most important works firsthand.

Louise Bourgeois
13 June – 17 October 2027

In summer 2027, the Fondation Beyeler will dedicate a major exhibition to Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010), bringing together around 100 works from all phases of the artistʼs career. The exhibition will feature sculptures made of wood, plaster, bronze, latex and other materials as well as ink drawings, watercolours, oil paintings and some of her monumental Cells, installations that rank among Bourgeoisʼs most significant works. A selection of her iconic spider sculptures will be displayed across both museum buildings and the expanded park. The exhibition will guide visitors through the diverse artistic forms of expression in Louise Bourgeoisʼs oeuvre and illustrate the close connection between her work and psychological themes. Her quest for balance and her engagement with the formal possibilities of gravity can also be viewed against this backdrop. Through her forms, Bourgeois touches upon what often remains unconscious and is hard to articulate, which is what makes her work so compelling. As one of the 20th centuryʼs most influential artists, Louise Bourgeois shaped the development of modern sculpture, finding radically new ways of probing essential themes such as the body, memory and identity.

Elizabeth Peyton
26 September 2027 – 9 January 2028

In autumn 2027, the Fondation Beyeler will devote a comprehensive solo exhibition to US-American artist Elizabeth Peyton (* 1965), conceived in close collaboration with the artist. Since the 1990s, Elizabeth Peyton is being regarded as one of the leading voices in contemporary painting. With her intimate, atmospheric portraits of friends, fellow artists, musicians and historic figures, she has created a distinctive visual language that emphasises closeness, fragility and emotion. The exhibition will bring together paintings, drawings and prints from various phases of the artistʼs career, offering many-layered perspectives onto Peytonʼs oeuvre. Her works combine classical portrait traditions with a contemporary sensibility, probing themes such as identity, beauty, memory and cultural projections. The Fondation Beyelerʼs exhibition is the first in Switzerland to present a comprehensive overview of Elizabeth Peytonʼs work, honouring an artist who has left a lasting imprint on contemporary figurative painting.

Constellations
Until 5 September 2027

"Constellations” inaugurates the Fondation Beyelerʼs newly expanded ensemble, unfolding across both museum buildings and throughout the enlarged expanse of the park. The exhibition brings together masterpieces from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries from the collection of the Fondation Beyeler, as well as significant loans from renowned Swiss and international private collections, featuring works by Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, René Magritte, Alberto Giacometti, Joan Mitchell, Cy Twombly, Louise Bourgeois, Marlene Dumas, Robert Gober, Thomas Schütte, Roni Horn, Elizabeth Peyton, Wolfgang Tillmans and Otobong Nkanga, alongside many others. “Constellations” gathers over 200 outstanding works from the museumʼs own collection and from private collections closely connected to the institution, such as the Hansjörg Wyss Collection, the Daros Collection, The Easton Foundation, the Calder Foundation, the Collection Hersaint, the Esther Grether Family Collection, the Rudolf Staechelin Collection, the Collection Marx and the Reuben Collection. The exhibition evolves throughout the year: part of the rooms and work groupings are changing with the seasons, giving rise to new constellations.