The Line

The Line is omnipresent in art: it defines form, structures surfaces, creates contours, separates and connects, traces time and space, and captures the imaginary. Paul Klee’s poetic metaphor of the line’s “charming little journey” inspires an exhibition that explores its boundless possibilities—from intimate gesture to constructive precision, from paper to spatial intervention. Curated by Véronique Abpurg, the show brings together around 120 works, including major loans, recent acquisitions, and site-specific installations. Five thematic chapters invite visitors to follow the line’s unfolding path.

Form and contour
The line as origin: outline that grants shape yet suggests dissolution. Egon Schiele’s charged contours, Alfred Kubin’s shadow worlds, and Paul Klee’s traces of thought exemplify its expressive range. Constantin Luser translates dense mental webs into wire drawings, while Birgit Jürgenssen revisits the linea serpentinata. Abstraction emerges in Jawlensky’s Abstract Head and Kandinsky’s autonomous forms. Pop artists Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Haring compress the line into bold contours; Sigmar Polke sketches a portrait on floral fabric; Antony Gormley’s Quantum Cloud XXXVII conjures a fragmented figure from rods in space.

Between writing and image
The line as bearer of language: Cy Twombly’s script-like gestures and Basquiat’s layered signs blur word and image. Fred Eerdekens and Brigitte Kowanz render meaning in light and shadow. Joseph Kosuth’s neon reflects Wittgenstein’s philosophy, while Franz West humorously materializes his “meaningless loop.” Žilvinas Kempinas sets tape into motion; Angela Bulloch’s machines play between algorithm and chance; Vera Molnár pioneers computer-generated line compositions oscillating between human script and machine logic.

The line in motion
How movement becomes form: Jackson Pollock’s drippings capture the immediacy of line. Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs spin between image and apparatus, while kinetic art of the 1960s sets lines vibrating—François Morellet, Dieter Roth, Marc Adrian, and Helga Philipp implicate the viewer. Marie Cool & Fabio Balducci draw fragile lines of thread or water as poetic yet critical gestures, while Sonia Sanoja writes with her body. In dialogue with Soto and Gego, a poetics of motion unfolds.

The line in space
When the line leaves the plane: Lucio Fontana’s Concetto Spaziale pierces canvas into real space. Minimalists redefine line as structure—Donald Judd rhythmizes volume, Dan Flavin electrifies space with light, Fred Sandback stretches precise yarn drawings. Rosemarie Castoro measures environments with tape, questioning social orders. Piero Manzoni’s sealed Linee escape the eye, Edward Krasiński’s elusive cable dramatizes infinity.

Boundary and connection
The line’s social ambivalence: Giulia Piscitelli’s fragile nets suggest fences as both barrier and resistance. Kiluanji Kia Henda overlays the Mediterranean with grids, exposing borders and fear. Kader Attia’s repaired ceramics reflect colonial legacies; Reena Saini Kallat weaves migration routes into dynamic cartographies. Carola Dertnig pulls a stocking as temporary barrier in public space, while Kowanz’s Relations merges light and Morse code.

The exhibition culminates in Chiharu Shiota’s Letters of Thanks: hundreds of visitors’ notes suspended in red threads form a floating network of memory and emotion.

What emerges is the extraordinary scope of a seemingly simple element. Across time, movements, and media, the line shifts between material and idea, between intimate gesture and social metaphor. Its “journey” continues as a medium of imagination, critique, and connection.

Artists in the exhibition include: Pierre Alechinsky, Marc Adrian, Karel Appel, Kader Attia, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Angela Bulloch, Rosemarie Castoro, Christo & Jeanne-Claude, Marie Cool & Fabio Balducci, Carola Dertnig, Marcel Duchamp, Fred Eerdekens, Amy Feldmann, Dan Flavin, Lucio Fontana, Günther Förg, Lucian Freud, Antony Gormley, Keith Haring, Mona Hatoum, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Alexej Jawlensky, Donald Judd, Birgit Jürgenssen, Reena Saini Kallat, Žilvinas Kempinas, Paul Klee, Gustav Klimt, Edgar Knoop, Joseph Kosuth, Brigitte Kowanz, Alfred Kubin, Edward Krasiński, Constantin Luser, Piero Manzoni, Agnes Martin, Henri Matisse, Vera Molnár, François Morellet, Nick Oberthaler, Pablo Picasso, Giulia Piscitelli, Jackson Pollock, Sigmar Polke, Helga Philipp, Sonia Sanoja, Fred Sandback, Egon Schiele, Chiharu Shiota, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, and Franz West.