On the occasion of the exhibition Kirchner × Kirchner  (12.9.2025–11.1.2026) Kunstmuseum Bern is showing Swiss art from across three centuries in an extensive display from its collection. 

In his expressionist mountain landscapes from Davos, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was continuing a tradition in art spanning the so-called “Schweizer Kleinmeister” to Ferdinand Hodler. However, the depiction of the Alpine world is not the only connection between Kirchner and the art produced in his adopted country. The exhibition opens up an expansive panorama of Swiss artists and motifs that can be related to his work. It encompasses symbolist figure paintings from Arnold Böcklin to Ferdinand Hodler, genre scenes from Albert Anker to Max Buri as well as landscapes from Franz Niklaus König to Martha Stettler. The display is being complemented by permanent loans from the Stiftung Expressionismus at Kunstmuseum Bern, from whose holdings eleven outstanding paintings were added to the collection in 2024.

With works by Cuno Amiet, Albert Anker, Ernest Biéler, Arnold Böcklin, Max Buri, Giovanni Giacometti, Ferdinand Hodler, Franz Niklaus König, Albert de Meuron, Albert Müller, Gabriele Münter, Max Pechstein, Hermann Scherer, Annie Stebler-Hopf, Victor Surbek, Martha Stettler, Marianne von Werefkin, Caspar Wolf and many more.

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In 1933 the Kunsthalle Bern held the biggest retrospective of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in his lifetime. The German artist, now considered one of the most outstanding protagonists of classical modern art, curated the show in close collaboration with Max Huggler (1903–1994), the then head of the Kunsthalle and later director of the Kunstmuseum Bern. 

With Kirchner × Kirchner the Kunstmuseum Bern is looking back at that significant event, while presenting Kirchner as the curator of his own work for the first time. Central to the exhibition is the way in which Kirchner interpreted his artistic development, generously revising it by reworking his paintings or writing texts about Heimelf, and the connections that he established between his works. The exhibition includes some 70 works made in the period between 1908 and 1933, from renowned European and American museums and private collections. The selection of exhibits, in combination with the historical background, makes this ambitious exhibition project a unique and multi-layered experience.

Curator: Nadine Franci

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One of the treasures of the Kunstmuseum Bern’s collection is the significant holding of works of earlier art. The presentation Life in Full. Old Masters from Duccio to Liotard places a particular focus on the Bernese renaissance and early Florentine and Sienese painting from the 14th and 15th centuries.

It includes artistically rich altar panels made by the Bernese Carnation Masters between 1480 and 1520, and the exceptional holdings of works by Niklaus Manuel, who was not only a painter, poet and graphic artist, but also a reformer, mercenary soldier and alderman of the city of Bern. 

Opulent still lifes and majestic portraits made by artists such as Joseph Heintz, Albrecht Kauw and Johannes Dünz, reflect the economic affluence of Bern in the age of the baroque. Altarpieces and fragments from the Italian Trecento and Quattrocento, unparalleled in Switzerland, are also on display in a cabinet. These include a devotional panel, renown and highly valuable, by Duccio di Buoninsegna, as well as works by Bernardo and Taddeo Daddi, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi and the workshop of Sandro Botticelli. 

Curator: Anne-Christine Strobel

Assistant curator: Michelle Fritschi 

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Franz Gertsch (1930-2022) is seen as a Swiss pioneer of photorealism and a master of the modern woodcut. The retrospective Franz Gertsch. Blow-Up, shown in two parts in the Kunstmuseum Bern and the Museum Franz Gertsch, offers an overview of an artistic career lasting more than sixty years, including monumental paintings of the youth and music scene from the 1970s, iconic portraits of women from the 1980s, family paintings and portraits of artist friends, epic landscapes and images of nature.

In the Kunstmuseum Bern the focus is on the years between 1956 and 2021, creating familiar insights, but also illuminating new aspects and perspectives for the reception of Gertsch’s works. The exhibition shows Gertsch’s stylistic development, and goes on to reveal the thematic lines and cross-connections within his œuvre. These include the relationship between humanity and nature, as well as the role of photography in painting, which are today acquiring a new significance in the context of ecological and humanitarian crises and in the age of the selfie. 

Curator: Dr. Kathleen Bühler

Assistant curator: Nina Liechti

Exhibition in the Museum Franz Gertsch 

19.9.2026–28.2.2027

The Franz Gertsch Museum concentrates on selected paintings and themes from the years between 1970 and 2022, with a particular focus on the models Patti Smith, Luciano Castelli and Irene Straub. Gertsch made a total of five portraits of the rock poet Patti Smith, and thirteen of Luciano Castelli between 1971 and 1977. Irene Staub was part of Luciano Castelli’s circle, and was known as a high-class prostitute in Zurich under the name of ‘Lady Shiva’. Other works in the exhibition include large-format paintings of the models Johanna (1983–1985) and Silvia (1988–2004), as well as the important landscape subjects of the forest path (Campiglia Marittima), grasses and the sea as well as selected woodcuts. 

Curator Museum Franz Gertsch: Anna Wesle 

An exhibition of Kunstmuseum Bern and Museum Franz Gertsch in cooperation with Louisiana Museum of Modern Art Humlebæk and Deichtorhallen Hamburg.

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Featuring some 70 works, the exhibition Journey into Freedom. Capri – Skagen – Monte Verità sheds light on the phenomenon of the European artists’ colony in Europe between 1830 and 1930.

In an age of social upheavals resulting from the industrial revolution, artists explored alternative lifestyles and social utopias away from the large cities, and brought subjects such as women’s emancipation, queer identity and the connection with nature centre-stage. The exhibition presents three selected dream destinations and allows visitors to experience the artistic breakthrough into a free and communal future. 

It confronts us with romantic and idealised depictions of landscape alongside naturalistic – sometimes brutal – images of the everyday life of workers, particularly fishermen. At the same time, it brings together art-historical and social issues with surprising contemporary relevance.

Co-Curators: Livia Wermuth and Andreas Schwab

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