Installation view of Bernheim, Zurich. Photo Courtesy: Berheim.
Zürich was unusually hot this June, and as temperatures rose past 30°C, so did the concentration of galleries programming, institutional traffic and collector visibility along the Rämistrasse. Crowned by the Kunsthaus’s David Chipperfield building, this road has demonstrated its capacity to be a central corridor for the arts throughout this busy Zürich Art Weekend and delivered a worthwhile and strategic prelude to the upcoming Art Basel.
This year’s edition brought together 73 institutions, galleries, and off-spaces across the city, offering a synthesis of the artists, collectors and market activity that will be shaping Basel and beyond. As much as it functions as a local celebration of the city that once saw the birth of Dadaism, Zürich Art Weekend has evolved into a vital calendar moment for the European art market. Several participating galleries use it to generate early visibility, while auction houses, notably Sotheby’s, now align major previews with this lively weekend. Demonstrably then, Zürich is a key location that takes center stage.
For anyone walking through the city’s various art clusters, Rämistrasse stood out. Home to a growing number of galleries, from long established names to new arrivals, the street runs parallel to Kunsthaus Zürich and serves as a physical and symbolic axis between commercial and institutional power in the city. Sotheby’s Zurich office, located on the same street, opened a preview of its upcoming June London auction to coincide with the Weekend. The preview included several highlights, among which Tamara Lempicka’s iconic nude La Belle Rafaëla (1927) stands out as a central piece, last seen at auction in 1985 it has already generated remarkable buzz. Visitors are thus once again reminded that Zürich is not a peripheral art city, but an increasingly strategic point in the broader European ecosystem.
The renewed interest in Rämistrasse is more than geographic, it reflects a larger recalibration of Zürich’s gallery landscape. With the decentralization of the past decade with galleries moving to Löwenbräukunst, Sihlquai, and former industrial zones, the visibility and density of Rämistrasse feels like a return to concentrated programming. For many gallerists proximity matters. It means easier access to collectors, to institutions, and to each other.
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Further up, Bernheim presented a compelling two artist exhibition featuring Kodai Ujiie and Denis Savary, that explored the boundaries between sculpture, design, and decorative arts. Director Pauline Renevier focused our conversation on the conceptual dialogue between the works, virtuously enriching the curatorial discourse with her own observations on the material density of the pieces.
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