Skip to Content

The Arts Intel Report

Jean-Michel Basquiat. Engadin

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Big Snow, 1984.

Until Mar 29, 2025
Via Serlas 22, 7500 St. Moritz, Switzerland

The location most associated with Jean-Michel Basquiat’s body of work is the grungy, graffitied streets of his native New York. But he also drew inspiration from a very different corner of the world—the serene landscape of Switzerland. Between his first trip, in 1982, and his premature death in 1988, Basquiat visited St. Moritz, Zurich, Appenzell, and Basel more than a dozen times. One region that particularly enthralled the artist was Engadin, which influenced a series of paintings directly tied to the Swiss Alps. The Dutch Settlers (1982), Skifahrer (Skier) (1983), and Big Snow (1984) are just a few of the paintings on view at Hauser & Wirth, St. Moritz, in which Basquiat fused motifs of white mountains and skiing with his more traditional themes of Black identity and history. In Big Snow, he refers to Jesse Owens, the gold-medal American star of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. From the African diaspora and spirituality to racism and slavery, not a stone is left unturned in this understudied corner of Basquiat’s portfolio. —Lucy Horowitz

© Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York