Hammershøi, the painter of silence

He is the painter of silence – perhaps the only one who made a program of minimalism. Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864-1916), a pale and secretive Dane, painted empty rooms where the light lingered on the moldingsmoldings, female necks turned towards the window, half-open doors that led nowhere. In Zurich, one hundred and fifty paintings, drawings and photographs, partly on loan from the SMK in Copenhagen, unfold this clinical obstinacy: Ida, the wife, perpetually posing with her back turned as a challenge to portraiture; the interior of Strandgade 30, his favorite address, declined like a Bach fugue; the funereal landscapes of Frederiksborg dissolving into the Scandinavian mist. Diaghilev wanted to buy it, Rilke marveled at it, Strindberg defended it – and yet posterity preferred Munch.

Vermeer revisited by Bergman, Bonnard without color, an unsung godfather of Mark Rothko, Edward Hopper, and James Turrell: the retrospective reveals the extent of a deep and lasting influence, from his early photographic compositions to his last twilight landscapes. The curatorial approach offers a deliberately slow journey, punctuated by literary quotations that accompany this muted silence. The room of nudes, where austerity suddenly shifts into unease, is worth the trip to Zurich alone. What remains are the final self-portraits, painted until the artist's death at fifty-one from throat cancer, which seal the work with an impossible signature.

KUNSTHAUS ZÜRICH
From July 3 to October 25, 2026