Wassily Kandinsky, Improvisation 21, 1911 (detail)

Coming soon

We are currently closed while we prepare the exhibition.

Opening: May 7, 2026, 6:00 p.m.

Abstract

In Focus
Carmen Herrera
Wassily Kandinsky
Mark Rothko

May 8, 2026 – May 17, 2027

At the beginning of the 20th century, artists developed a new visual language: it was no longer meant to depict the visible world, but rather to be radically modern and universally understandable. Science, technology, and progress—as well as the search for the spiritual and emotional—became the driving forces behind an art form reduced entirely to lines, colors, and shapes. To this day, abstraction continues to fascinate us in its many forms.

At the heart of this exhibition, featuring some 60 works, are three significant new acquisitions by Carmen Herrera, Wassily Kandinsky, and Mark Rothko. Surrounded by other paintings and sculptures from the museum’s own collection, they illustrate three distinct forms of abstraction—the departure from the object, geometric construction, and color-field painting. With their transnational biographies, these artists also demonstrate that abstraction has always been—and still is—a global movement.

Works by:

Josef Albers
Hans Arp
Rudolf Belling
Max Bill
Max Ernst
Alberto Giacometti
Fritz Glarner
Camille Graeser
Katharina Grosse
Erich Heckel
Carmen Herrera

Leiko Ikemura
Alexej Jawlensky
Wassily Kandinsky
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Paul Klee
Imi Knoebel
Verena Loewensberg
August Macke
Franz Marc
Joan Miró
Piet Mondrian

Jackson Pollock
Hanna Roeckle
Mark Rothko
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Jan Schoonhoven
Sean Scully
Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Yves Tanguy
Liliane Tomasko
Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart
Wols