Arnold Böcklin was born in Basel in October 1827. A painter, draughtsman and sculptor, he is one of the great figures of European Symbolism. He trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Düsseldorf, with the landscape painter Alexandre Calame in Geneva, and in Paris. Yet it was Italy that captivated him: he married Angela Pascucci, from Rome, there in 1853, and spent a large part of his life there.
At a time drawn to realism, Böcklin chose another path. He painted myths, legendary creatures and strange, visionary landscapes. His most famous work, Isle of the Dead, exists in five versions painted between 1880 and 1886: a boat glides across still water towards a rocky islet guarded by tall cypresses. The painting became an icon. It inspired composers, including Sergei Rachmaninoff, and fascinated Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí and Max Ernst. Much later, H. R. Giger paid tribute to it in his biomechanical style.
Böcklin died in 1901 in San Domenico, near Fiesole and Florence. More than a century later, his work still fascinates: for the bicentenary of his birth, the exhibition “Böcklin. Jenseits des Mythos” will bring together for the first time the four surviving versions of Isle of the Dead, at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin (19 March to 1 August 2027), then at the Kunstmuseum Basel (4 September 2027 to 23 January 2028).
