‘Jean-Michel Basquiat. Engadin’

Last December Hauser & Wirth St. Moritz opened a Jean-Michel Basquiat solo exhibition, dedicated to the paintings he created in and inspired by his visits to Switzerland.

The rebellious American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960–1988) is very well known for his expressive paintings combined bold text and imagery from his expansive references across art, film, history and music.

Bruno Bischofberger (born 1940) Swiss art dealer and collector became Basquiat’s worldwide exclusive art dealer in 1982 – in the same year Basquiat visited the country for the first time. Engadin, St. Moritz, Zurich, Appenzell and the Swiss culture served as a new and very different inspiration for the New York based artist.

‘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. Perhaps what drew Basquiat most to this part of Switzerland was, as curator and art historian Dr. Dieter Buchhart writes, ‘the contrast between the pulsating life, the clubs, the street noise, and the breakneck speed of the metropolis New York and the ‘discovery of slowness’ in the unique, overwhelming landscape of the Engadin.’

The exhibition is on view at Hauser & Wirth St. Moritz gallery through 29 March 2025.