Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Think Jean-Michel Basquiat, and New York is not far behind. Few artists are as redolent of the city’s hustle, wail of sirens and exhilarating energy, especially the gritty subculture of the Lower East Side. His brightly coloured paintings flicker with subway lines, skyscrapers and signage.A new exhibition at Hauser & Wirth St Moritz this month, however, establishes that Basquiat also drew on a very different landscape, that of the Engadin Valley in Switzerland. Its mountains, sports and traditions became a significant part of his visual language. Even the local bratwurst makes an appearance.Basquiat first travelled to Switzerland in 1983, at the invitation of the gallerist Bruno Bischofberger, who had become his dealer the previous year and would remain so until the Brooklyn-born artist’s untimely death five years later, aged 27. The exhibition is in part a tribute to their robust yet tender-hearted relationship.At the time, Basquiat was still reeling from his first solo exhibition in 1982, at which every painting had sold on opening night, earning him hundreds of thousands of dollars in a few hours. One minute he was stealing food, the next painting in Armani suits, and well on his way to a $500-a-day heroin habit.More visits followed — about a dozen in all: “I showed him everything that was important to me, and with his insatiable curiosity, he absorbed everything that was new to him,” writes Bischofberger in the catalogue. Basquiat stayed at both Bischofberger’s family home in Küsnacht, on the eastern shore of Lake Zurich, and at their holiday home, a yellow house called Chesa Lodisa in St Moritz.Ever since a local hotelier named Johannes Badrutt persuaded a handful of English tourists to winter with him in 1864 (previously St Moritz was a summer resort), this cluster of old stone farmhouses, church spires and forests of snow-laden pines had lured a fashionable, well-heeled crowd. Douglas Fairbanks, Brigitte Bardot and the Shah of Iran were among those to have holidayed there.Engadin has a long history of nurturing artists and writers, too: Friedrich Nietzsche wrote Thus Spake Zarathustra here; Thomas Mann called it “the most beautiful destination in the world”, and the Giacomettis lived in nearby Maloja — both Alberto and his father Giovanni painted the local landscape. It wasn’t until the 1960s that St Moritz became an art world hotspot, however, largely thanks to Bischofberger, who opened the first gallery there in 1963. “I think he came to us so often to St Moritz because he felt appreciated and comfortable there,” says Bischofberger’s daughter, Cora. “You know, my father really liked what he did — he understood what he stood for. So many people thought [Basquiat] was weird or overpriced or hyped. And it was easy to get drugs there . . . he was always high. But, you know, I was a child. You’re not aware of those differences or judgmental of those things.”Cora even created a painting with Basquiat in St Moritz, an acrylic on canvas titled “Pakiderm 3” (1983). Her contribution to its curious assortment of animals, skulls and a crown on a rich teal blue ground, was “some flowers and writing ‘Cora’ five times. Probably I had just learned to write my name. I guess he played off my contribution because he wrote ‘Jean’, which I don’t think he did on any other painting in that way.”“The babychild primitive technique of my daughter and Basquiat’s independently chosen ‘primitive’ style were a perfect fit,” writes Bischofberger, though Cora is not so sure. “Everybody says he painted a bit like a child, but from a child’s perspective, I didn’t think that at all. Even his vague notion of three dimensions was way beyond what I could do.” Also in the exhibition are drawings that Basquiat made with Cora in the Chesa Lodisa’s guest book, in blue, red and black crayon. These include a snow-capped mountain, St Moritz’s famous lake, and a snowman parted from his head. Bischofberger was so excited by these playful collaborations, which he compared to the surrealists’ Exquisite Corpse drawings (a version of the parlour game Consequences), that in 1984 he commissioned a now-legendary suite of 15 collaborative paintings by Basquiat, Andy Warhol and Francesco Clemente. (Basquiat and Warhol would continue to make works together long afterward: some 160 paintings between 1984 and 1985.)Bischofberger, Cora tells me, discovered a particular joy in taking Basquiat to his home canton of Appenzell, a place so steeped in tradition that women were barred from voting on local matters until 1990. “It’s a very, very old-fashioned farming community,” she says. “There’s a cow beauty contest and people sing — my father used to enjoy those folk festivals. I think he brought Jean-Michel along to appreciate things of a different culture, but also because it was somewhere no one’s going to recognise you, or judge you as an artist.” It wasn’t always easy having Basquiat as a guest, however. He famously saw any surface as game (including refrigerators and car doors) and once dragged a custom-cut mattress from his bedroom at Chesa Lodisa down to the garage in lieu of canvas, which did not land well with Cora’s mother, Yoyo.Nor did Basquiat locking himself into his bedroom on Christmas Eve — the day the Swiss celebrate Christmas — when the courier transporting paintings he had intended to give each of the Bischofbergers as gifts did not arrive in time. “He was so upset,” Cora says, “and my mother had a total meltdown: ‘for God’s sake! I’ve got four small kids! I’ve got to deal with everything else, this is the last thing I need!’“Of course, as a user, all your senses are heightened, your ups and downs are increased. He was a very caring person and I think he felt embarrassed. He came out and he said to my mother, ‘give me a break, man, Yoyo’. It’s become a family joke. If my mother freaks out, to this day, my father will still say to her, ‘give me a break man, Yoyo.”‘Jean-Michel Basquiat: Engadin’, Dec 14 to Mar 29 2025Find out about our latest stories first — follow FTWeekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life and Art wherever you listen
