Exhibition Contemporary frescoes among the Old Masters at the Kunstmuseum Basel

The Kunstmuseum Basel has placed contemporary works by the Albanian artist Anri Sala in the middle of its Old Masters Gallery. The frescoes, painted in pale colors, meet the accentuated colorfulness of the paintings from the late Gothic and early Renaissance periods.

For the six works, which are placed in a room between old masters such as Konrad Witz and Hans Holbein the Elder, the Berlin-based artist has made use of a historical craft technique that once gave Raphael, Michelangelo and Piero della Francesca immortality: fresco painting.

This is a technique in which the colors are applied to the still-damp plaster of walls or ceilings, which gives the paintings great permanence.

In two works, Sala refers directly to a model from the early Renaissance, namely Piero della Francesca and his famous fresco cycle "The Legend of the Holy Cross" in the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo (I).

Marble elements integrated

He picked out two details from one of the depictions: two women's heads and two hands. They look like spontaneous enlargements that have been focused out with two fingers on a touchscreen. The colors are distorted like a color photo negative.

Sala has also integrated rough marble elements into the works, which extend beyond the rectangular outlines of the pictures. The artist used these to simulate flaking areas, which can often be seen as signs of time in historical murals.

In a second series, Sala painted cloud pictures that he had originally photographed from airplanes. He has also integrated elements of marble into them.

The six works, which were created in 2023, belong to the collection of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation. The Kunstmuseum Basel has the right to freely use works from the extensive collection for exhibitions, which it has done in this case.

The small exhibition with the programmatic title "Anri Sala - in the midst of old masters" can be seen until September 15.

SDA