A comprehensive retrospective of the Basel painter and draughtsman Walter Kurt Wiemken is an old desideratum. Since the exhibitions at the Berner Kunsthalle and the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen in 1962, the work of the young deceased, which is little known outside of Basel, has been seen little in the spotlight, although it is represented in all the important museum collections in German-speaking Switzerland.

From 1930 to 1940, Wiemken created an oeuvre whose sharpness of content and artistic density are unusual. Fantastically grotesque imagery to illustrate contrasts: rich and poor, life and death, war and peace, devils and angels. Wiemken characterized the time between the world wars in a ruthlessness unprecedented for Switzerland.

After his training in Munich and Paris and with the exception of various trips to France and Ticino, Wiemken was always active in his hometown of Basel, where he was co-founder of the renowned artist group 33.

The Zug project does not focus on the supposed outsider Wiemken, as he has long claimed. but focuses on his works and places them on the Dynamometer. Around ninety works from all phases of his work, works on paper and paintings, mark the core substance (of an oeuvre with over 1000 numbers). Wiemken cannot really be assigned to any art movement (although he is the main representative of the Basel Surrealism). Today, you can see a quality of its own: How life went Wiemken evidently also in his confrontation with art around the question of connections of opposites.

The exhibition will then be shown by the Museo d'arte di Mendrisio. The co-edited, bilingual catalogue contains a comprehensive introduction by Stephan E. Hauser, ten analyses of works by various authors, 50 illustrations as well as biography and bibliography.

For some time now, the Kunsthaus Zug has been committed to the reappraisal of forgotten Swiss artists of the 20th century. Names such as Johannes Robert Schürch, Friedrich Kuhn, Eva Wipf or, most recently, Kurt Seligmann should be remembered.

In addition to the Wiemken exhibition, works from the museum's own collection, with a focus on surrealism/fantasy, can be seen: Abt, Bodmer, Brignoni, Moeschlin, Oppenheim, Seligmann, Tschumi, von Moos, but also Ensor, Münch, Kirchner and Dix.