Vija Celmins’ Exhibition in Basel Receives International Recognition

The exhibition “Vija Celmins” (15 June–21 September 2025) at Fondation Beyeler in Basel has received wide international recognition and has been included in The Art Newspaper’s selection of the most significant exhibitions of 2025, attesting to the continued relevance of the artist’s work and the exhibition’s resonance within the global contemporary art context.

The exhibition has also been singled out by Simon Martin, Director of Pallant House Gallery, who highlights the quiet yet profoundly affecting nature of Celmins’ work:

Some artists’ work is so understated and poetic that it might be overlooked in a world of shouty, instant imagery. Vija Celmins is one of those—so quiet, so subtle. Her paintings and drawings take as their subjects the things that others would overlook—the fall of light on a cobweb or the creases of a discarded letter. But in noting them, and carefully marking down every gradation of light, she gives them such intensity.

Vija Celmins is best known for her meticulously executed paintings and drawings depicting natural phenomena such as oceans, spider webs, night skies and deserts. Her works are characterised by exceptional visual precision and a sustained, concentrated gaze. They are not only visually compelling but also emotionally resonant, offering an experience of perception, surface and infinity. Her artistic practice reflects influences from various 20th-century art movements - including Pop Art, Photorealism, Minimalism, Conceptual Art and Surrealism - yet these influences are not adopted directly, instead being integrated into a highly personal and recognisable visual language.

Vija Celmins was born in Riga in 1938. At the end of the Second World War, she fled with her parents to Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1948. She studied art at the Herron School of Art and Design at Indiana University and at the University of California, Los Angeles. Until 1980, Celmins lived and worked in Los Angeles, after which she relocated to New York.

Over the course of her career, Vija Celmins has established an outstanding international reputation, becoming one of the most significant women artists of her generation. Her works are held in the collections of major museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Tate in London, and others. The Latvian National Museum of Art holds eleven works by the artist.

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