The collection display invites viewers on a journey along numerous highlights of the museum’s collection – as well as offering a reflection on the notion of sensation.

The year’s first collection display invites viewers on a journey along numerous highlights of the museum’s collection – as well as offering a reflection on the notion of sensation. Paul Cezanne, to whom the Fondation Beyeler is concurrently devoting a major exhibition, provides the starting point for the collection display: in his letters, the artist repeatedly writes of “sensations colorantes” (“colour sensations”) as a key foundation of his art. He understood his pictorial practice as a direct translation onto canvas of his own chromatic visual impressions (“sensations”).

In English, the term “sensation” encompasses the notions of perception or sensory impression as well as those of feeling or emotion. The collection display thus centres on works by artists who make their sensations tangible either through special forms of perception or through powerful emotional intensity.

The collection display features works by among others Lucas Arruda, Francis Bacon, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louise Bourgeois, Wassily Kandinsky, Ellsworth Kelly, Fernand Léger, Claude Monet, Susan Philipsz, Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol and Issy Wood.