Art Basel

Highlights from our booth include a public debut of paintings by the late artist Ficre Ghebreyesus, marking the artist’s first presentation in Basel, Switzerland. Ghebreyesus worked seamlessly between abstraction and figuration, populating his works with intricate, highly personal experiences as a citizen of the world. While the artist turned down most opportunities to show during his short lifetime, recent solo institutional exhibitions of his work have been held at the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, California and at Artspace, New Haven, Connecticut. The gallery began representing the Estate in 2019 and held the solo exhibition Ficre Ghebreyesus: Gate to the Blue in 2020. Five paintings by the artist are currently on view in the 59th Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams.

Also featured are works by Zilia Sánchez and Nancy Spero. Sánchez’s sculptural practice will be presented in Basel for the first time, highlighting the artist’s evolving interest in completely free-standing work. A recently realized sculpture in bronze, Concepto II (2019), is comprised of two freestanding parts to form a symbiotic pair. The sculpture shares visual characteristics with Sánchez’s historic paintings, demonstrating how she has repeatedly explored a set of core motifs across her lifetime. The artist’s first full retrospective, Zilia Sánchez: Soy Isla, closed in 2020 at El Museo del Barrio after touring through the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC and the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Puerto Rico.

A large handprinted collage on paper Marlene (2002) by Nancy Spero sees the image of the pioneering actress Marlene Dietrich repeated in various colors; a chorus of the woman who dared to defy societal and gender norms. A dedicated presentation of works by the artist and her husband, the late Leon Golub, are currently on view at the Tate Modern. Spero's scroll-like work Notes in Time (1979), part of the Museum of Modern Art's collection, is also currently on view in the Collection Gallery. Watch a recent video featuring Leah Dickerman, director of MoMA’s research programs, as she takes a close look at Spero’s scroll-like alternate history presented, and wonders how we “understand the mythological structures that support inequity in our culture.”