Videos Higlights Collection

Dali’s cryptic painting is based on a picture executed by Millet. The famous surrealist transformed the idyllic landscape into a scene of horror, filling it with macabre eroticism.

Misia Natanson was Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s friend and muse. He painted her portrait nine times in all. Find out more about this artist, who descended from an old aristocratic family, and the pianist from Saint Petersburg, who was the patroness of numerous other artists such as Renoir, Vallotton and Bonnard.

Alexandre Calame’s painting is firmly rooted in the romantic tradition. Find out more about his painting of the Eiger and why this artist from western Switzerland traveled to the Bernese Oberland.

The composition of Louis Moilliet’s richly colored painting is highly sophisticated. Find out more about this artist, who was born in Bern, and very unjustly destined to be overshadowed by his friends Paul Klee and August Macke. He accompanied them on a trip to Tunisia in 1914.

Find out more about Chaim Soutine’s expressive painted masterpiece depicting a slaughtered ox. And about the painter too, who was friends with both Modigliani and Chagall. He lived and worked in the La Ruche studio collective in Paris.

Find out more about Johannes Itten, who was born in Emmental and was a Bauhaus teacher and “master.” This abstract painting demonstrates Itten’s theory of color and design in practice, which proved groundbreaking for developments in modern art.

Despite its asymmetry, Piet Mondrian's painting emanates harmony and serenity. Find out more about why the Dutch artist decided to compose only with rectangles and black lines in his paintings. From the podcast series featuring highlights of the Kunstmuseum Bern Collection.

Max Ernst has the sun set in a mysterious, nocturnal forest landscape. Find out in what way this artwork is relevant to the artist's childhood. From the podcast series featuring highlights of the Kunstmuseum Bern Collection.

Hans Arp and his wife Sophie Taeuber-Arp produced a number of artworks together. Find out in the video how the richly contrasting pictures mirror the relationship between the two artists.

Adolf Wölfli, who spent many years of his life in the Waldau psychiatric clinic near Bern, created a universe of his own in drawings and writings. The wealth of lines, patterns, musical notation and script is literally mesmerizing to look at. From the podcast series featuring highlights of the Kunstmuseum Bern Collection.

Find out more about why John the Baptist rebuked Herod, king of Judaea, and why the unknown painter who executed the Bernese John the Baptist Altar is called the "Carnation Master."   From the podcast series featuring highlights of the Kunstmuseum Bern Collection.

On his last trip to Wales, the English painter Alfred Sisley executed a series of views of the coastline. The paintings leave an impression of eternity and, at the same time, express the singularity of the moment. From the podcast series featuring highlights of the Kunstmuseum Bern Collection.

Die «Obstlese» macht deutlich, wie sehr sich der 1868 in Solothurn geborene Künstler mit den Strömungen seiner Zeit auseinandergesetzt hat. Sein Werk ist ein Schwerpunkt innerhalb der Sammlung des Kunstmuseums Bern, an dessen Hauptfassade Amiet 1936 eine Apfelernte als Sgraffito anbrachte.

Learn more about the artistic credo of Henri Matisse and about the woman who served Matisse as a model for several years.

Immerse yourself in this great work of Rothko and the world of Abstract Expressionism. Learn how the artist succeeded to establish "a consummated experience between picture and onlooker".

Pierre Bonnard's most common motifs are brigtly lit gardens and landscapes, colourful still lifes and initmate female nudes. The woman relaxing and dozing in the deckchair represents his muse, life partner and future wife Marthe.

Alberto Giacometti is one of the most renowned sculptors of the 20th century. His "Woman from Venice I" is a figure full of contradictions: on the one hand she is upright and self-assured, but on the other she is fragile and vulnerable; her feet anchored on the ground, timeless yet contemporary, she stands for the individual that human beings by definition embody.

The artist found the artistic inspiration for his works in his jewish-russian background. Find out more about this painting, very likely dedicated to his fiancé.

Due to his colorful and visionary paintings Joan Miró was one of the most popular artists of the 20th century. Learn more about Miró's work of art and why the technique of collage was so important to him.

This painting depicts the second Unspunnen Festival, which took place on 17. August 1808. The Artist attended the Festival in the Bernese Oberland in company with Madame de Stael who is standing arm in arm with an elegantly dressed gentleman in the centre of the picture.

Stauffer-Bern often drew and painted from photographic templates. His primary artistic concerns were to depict nature as a source and to create realistic representations of his motifs.

August Macke was one of the renowned expressonist artists. In the year our picture was painted, he was living in Bonn, joined the "Blue Rider" group of artists in Munich and visited the painter Robert Delaunay in Paris with Franz Marc.

Learn more about how Odysseus outwitted Achilles and also why the artist Joseph Werner was among the most important painters and sparkling personalities in 17th-century Bern. 

The famous Bern artist Albrecht Kauw presents in his still life a rich selection of fish as we might have found served in a patrician household during his lifetime. Kauw follows Netherlandish painting in his art while depicting the lifestyle and situation of the proud Bernese landowners.

Das menschliche Antlitz ist das zentrale Motiv im Schaffen von Alexej von Jawlensky. So auch bei der Sinnenden Frau, deren Blick ins Leere führt und gleichzeitig den Betrachter zu fixieren scheint. Erfahren Sie mehr über Jawlensky und seinen künstlerischen Stil.

Allowing us a view of her private sphere, a young woman sits in a sparsely furnished room of a middle-class household while reading intently. The Swiss artist Felix Vallotton explored the subject of a reading woman in a variety of ways with diverse models sitting for him.

Already early in his artistic career, Franz Marc was intensely fascinated by the world of animals—and felt a strong bond to them. We can palpably perceive this in Blaues Pferd II, where viewers have the impression that they experience the world from the perspective of a horse.
Learn more about Franz Marc’s development as an artist and the different stages of his artistic career.

Elongated forms are an unmistakeable characteristic of Amedeo Modigliani’s work—and are obvious in this portrait of Elvira too. During the artist’s lifetime this female nude created quite a scandal. What is your reaction to it

The sunflower is a recurrent motif in Vincent van Gogh’s artworks, and is also depicted in this oil painting. Are you curious about what symbolic meaning the sunflower had for this artist?

Learn more about the oil painting depicting the Grindelwald Glacier, which was executed around 1777 by the famous Swiss landscape painter Caspar Wolf. The painting served as a model for a copperplate engraving that was, during the artist's lifetime, sold to tourists as a souvenir in folders containing various Alpine scenes.

Do you know who the patron saint of painters is since early medieval times? Learn more about the artist Niklaus Manuel Deutsch and his work. From the podcast series featuring highlights of the Kunstmuseum Bern’s collection.

What is depicted in this work: a pyramid, the mountain of the Muses, or Niesen of the Swiss Alps? Learn more about the painting and its artist Paul Klee, who decisively influenced 20th-century art with his highly diverse work.

Juan Gris reduced figures and objects to their basic forms and shapes in his paintings. He also combined motifs such as guitars, drinking glasses, and pieces of fruit in ever new compositions. Juan Gris belongs to the leading representatives of cubism together with Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

How did the artist Paul Cézanne see and portray himself? Learn more about the French artist and his self-portrait.

During his Blue Period Picasso executed this painting of a young female drinker who has fallen asleep. Learn more about the story behind the woman in the painting as well as about the painting itself.

The symbolist oil painting "Night" depicts seven sleeping figures. The famous Swiss painter portrayed himself between his wife Bertha Stucki and his mistress Augustine Dupin. The painting is one of Hodler's most famous paintings besides "Day".

Learn more about Albert Anker's painting depicting the children of a day nursery walking over the Bernese Kirchenfeld bridge. The work is one of this famous artist's last large-format oil paintings.

The Irish artist Sean Scully paints one color field next to the other. Learn more about how this artist's energy and emotions are expressed in the medium of paint.

Learn more about these two lovers who meet on a spring day in the garden of an Italian country house. The renowned Swiss painter Arnold Böcklin was a prominent symbolist artist.

Duccio di Buoninsegna's painting of the Virgin as the Mother of God with the child Jesus still fascinates us today. Learn more about this richly decorated devotional image that the Sienese painter executed while also working on the famous Madonna Rucellai.

The famous impressionist painter Edouard Manet lived in the country house portrayed in the oil painting. The approach is a tree-lined path into a bright and sunny garden.

Be enchanted by Meret Oppenheim's surrealist dream world. Learn more about this famous Swiss female artist's enigmatic picture.

Georges Braque's painting shows the houses of a French fishing village not far from Marseille. Learn more about this famous cubist landscape painting.

The Staubbach waterfall in Lauterbrunnen Valley situated in the Bernese Oberland is still an attraction for tourists today. Learn more about the Swiss painter König and his sources of inspiration, e.g. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's famous poem "Song of the Spirits over the Waters". From the podcast series on the highlights of the Kunstmuseum Bern Collection.

The collage by the dada artist Kurt Schwitters was painted shortly after the First World War. Learn more about this Merz picture that was assembled and glued together out of all kinds of everyday objects.

Learn more about this expressionist painting of a group of country people on alpine meadows close to Davos. This is one of Ludwig Kirchner's largest paintings. He was one of the most famous of the Brücke artists.