Eugène Carrière

As part of the Kunsttage 2025, an exhibition dedicated to the renowned French Symbolist artist Eugène Carrière (1849 – 1906) opens at Hauser & Wirth’s gallery in Basel. ‘Sculpting Light’ spans 20 years of the artist’s practice, traversing some of the artist’s best known subjects, from portraits of artists, intimate depictions of mothers and children and landscapes. The exhibition explores these motifs through Carrière’s conceptual use of light. As art historian Helen Hirsch writes: ‘Carrière uses light as a metaphor for the inner light of the subject, for its aura. It is not just a stylistic device; it also has a symbolic function for the artist as an emblem of a person's inner vitality and charisma: their outer appearance is an expression of their inner light.’ Through this lens, ‘Sculpting Light’ spotlights the artistic output of an artist who, from today's perspective, created an astonishing and timeless body of work.