The canton of Basel-Stadt is organizing a massive art sale, offering approximately 400 paintings that have been gathering dust in government storage for years. The diverse collection, featuring oil paintings, sketches, and drawings by regional artists, will be sold to the public at prices ranging from 40 to several thousand Swiss francs.
Art historian Isabel Zürcher, who is cataloging the works on behalf of the canton, describes the collection as full of treasures stored in an inconspicuous warehouse near Basel. These artworks were once owned by Basel-Stadt's Finance Department but have remained largely forgotten in storage. "There are works that make you wonder why the artists aren't better known – they're such wonderful paintings!" Zürcher explains as she prepares the pieces for the major sale.
The collection includes works bearing the names of well-known Basel artists alongside others with mysterious signatures. Among the standout pieces is a portrait by Hermann Meyer titled "The Little Walti" from 1925, showing a young boy in elegant clothing. The back of the sketch bears the dedication "To dear Walti for Christmas 1925." Zürcher notes this rare portrait particularly touched her heart, describing how the five or six-year-old boy appears like an old gentleman in the painting. "This painting has grown close to my heart," she says, noting it's one of the few portraits in a collection otherwise dominated by landscapes.
Another notable work is "The Dragon" from 1958 by Marguerithe Ammann, which draws inspiration from mechanical sculptures like those of Jean Tinguely and depicts a dragon reminiscent of Basel's mythical basilisk. Ammann, who worked as an illustrator for Vogue in London, created works that are typically very delicate, but this particular piece from the Finance Department's collection remains well-preserved. The collection also includes Rose-Marie Joray's "Worker Houses" from 1986, a light-filled watercolor showing typical worker housing in Basel's Breite district, and Hans Sandreuter's "Bignasco" from 1896, one of the oldest works in the collection depicting a Ticino landscape with classical compositional elements and goats visible among the rocks.
The paintings are scheduled to find new homes by the end of November, when the warehouse will be emptied. Some works will go to local museums or Basel's Art Credit program, while others have been offered back to the artists or their descendants. However, approximately 300 paintings remain for public sale, which will take place over two days at the end of November at the Dreispitz area.
David Weber, spokesperson for Basel's Finance Department, explains the decision to dissolve the collection: "We don't have a mandate to curate an art collection. We simply lack the expertise and resources to properly store these works." The department concluded that selling the collection was the most practical solution rather than continuing to house artworks they couldn't properly maintain.
This isn't the first such sale organized by Zürcher. Four years ago, she conducted a similar sale for Basel-Stadt's Construction and Transportation Department, which drew unexpectedly large crowds. "People stood in long lines for hours to acquire one of the paintings," she recalls. Surprisingly, the most sought-after pieces weren't those by famous artists. "The supposedly less attractive works by regional artists disappeared faster than we could keep track of," Zürcher remembers, viewing this as proof that art doesn't need prominent signatures to touch people's hearts.
As the sale approaches, Zürcher hopes that works like "The Little Walti" will finally find appropriate homes. "Walti deserves a better place than a dark storage room," she says, reflecting the sentiment that these long-forgotten artworks deserve to be appreciated rather than hidden away in government storage facilities.
