Switzerland Guide
Basel
The Kunstmuseum
Basel's world-famous Kunstmuseum is a rather stern Neoclassical building – all marble floors, high ceilings and grand staircases – which tends to do the art down a bit, but don't let yourself be put off. There's a dazzling array of twentieth-century art, including Dali's nightmarish Perspectives, roomfuls of paintings by Arp, Klee, Léger, Munch, Braque and the Impressionists, a fantastically attenuated cat by Giacometti, and fluid sculptures in wood by Kirchner and Scherer. In 1967, the Basel electorate voted to use Fr.6 million of public funds to buy two Picassos for the museum, Arlequin assis and Les deux frères – and then stumped up another Fr.2.4 million to guarantee the purchase. The artist was so impressed by this popular enthusiasm that he personally donated four more works.
The gallery's modern art, and its large collection of nineteenth-century German, French and Swiss painting, is, however, overshadowed by its vast and absorbing medieval collection. Dozens of rooms are devoted to works by the prolific Holbein family in particular, including the extraordinary two-metre-long Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb (1521), a painting which obsessed Dostoevsky when he visited the museum. The work subsequently popped up in Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot, when a character's recollections of it lead him to question the existence of God.
Address: St Alban-Graben 16
Opening time: Tues– Sun 10am–5pm
Price: Fr.10, free on 1st Sun of month
Website: www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch