The exhibition is the result of a close collaboration between the artist Nicole Eisenman and four European museums: the Aargauer Kunsthaus in Switzerland, the Kunsthalle Bielefeld in Germany, the Kunstmuseum Den Haag in the Netherlands and the Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles in France.

Human existence, questions of identity, social conventions and power relations in contemporary Western society are central themes in Nicole Eisenman’s work.

Nicole Eisenman (b. 1965) is an American painter and sculptor who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York, where for over thirty years they have been producing a multifaceted and abundant body of work that is overtly ironic and political. Profoundly informed by the artist’s personal life and infused with the motifs and issues of today’s world, Eisenman’s practice is also closely related to the art of earlier centuries, from antiquity and the Renaissance to modernism.

The exhibition presents more than seventy paintings and drawings by Nicole Eisenman, offering an extensive overview of their work since the 1990s. This ensemble is juxtaposed with seventy works on loan from the collections of the partner museums in Aarau, Bielefeld and The Hague. Dating primarily from the early years of the twentieth century, they include works by internationally renowned modern artists such as James Ensor, Edvard Munch, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Vincent van Gogh – but also works by lesser-known artists who played an influential role within their sphere, such as Max von Moos and Alice Bailley in Switzerland, Gerd Arntz and Co Westerik in the Netherlands, and K the Kollwitz and Hermann Stenner in Germany.