Eva Lootz

Kunsthaus Baselland is pleased to announce the first presentation of the internationally renowned artist Eva Lootz in a German-speaking country. The comprehensive exhibition is realized in cooperation with the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and in close collaboration with the artist herself.

While Eva Lootz was one of the leading pioneers of the 1970s, her work is only now being discovered in all its abundance and astonishing relevance: born in Vienna in 1940, the artist has lived in Madrid since the 1960s, choosing to live and work in Spain at a time when the country was ruled by a military dictatorship that remained in power until the mid-1970s.

Making art, as Lootz understands it and understood it from the very beginning, was therefore shaped by political resistance and social and private resilience. For Lootz, being political means, more than anything else, looking closely, listening carefully, and understanding what is being said or read. The materials she uses emphasize softness and poetic fluidity—even when they are made of marble or bitumen—while reflecting the origins of their extraction at the same time: salt, sand, water, stone. Her oeuvre includes drawings, sculptures, videos, photographs, (wall) paintings and site-specific interventions.

Thanks to her systematic, profound, yet highly poetic questioning and exploration of the world—its materials, their extraction and exploitation, their interrelationships, and the potential to shape them by hand—Eva Lootz is now internationally acclaimed. She is one of the few women artists whose work left its mark on the European and US art movements of the 1960s and 1970s that emphasized the process of working with materials and their different meanings, such as Arte Povera, Land Art, and Anti-Form. 

For her comprehensive exhibition Eva Lootz is showing works, installations, and groups of works from the 1960s to the present day. She will also create new in-situ works in response to the Kunsthaus Baselland and its surroundings as well as the wider Basel region. 

Curated by Ines Goldbach and Fernando López (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid).

The exhibition is generously supported by Acción Cultural Española; UNIQA Kunstversicherung Schweiz; Österreichisches Kulturforum; Schweizer Salinen; Merian Gärten; Bundesministerium Wohnen, Kunst, Kultur, Medien und Sport der Republik Österreich; Embajada de España en Suiza and Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim Stiftung.

Echo Chambers
Sophia Al-Maria, Regina de Miguel, Dadi Wirz and the Department of Art History at the University of Basel
September 26–November 16, 2025

For two months the exhibition Echo Chambers provides a space to explore the questions relating to identity, ecology, and experiences of nature that are highlighted by the works shown in the exhibition of Eva Lootz on the ground floor—and which are more relevant today than ever before.

The presentation features works by Sophia Al-Maria, Regina de Miguel, and Dadi Wirz. An additional space has been set up to host special educational formats that are also open to the public. One of these events is a seminar led by Charlotte Matter from the University of Basel, “A Discussion about Material and Sensuality in the work of Eva Lootz,” with Charlotte Matter, Ines Goldbach, and students from the Department of Art History at the University of Basel.

Kunsthaus Baselland is generously supported by Amt für Kultur Basel-Landschaft, Gemeinde Münchenstein, Gemeinde Muttenz, Novartis, BLKB, Habasit, and those who wish to remain unnamed.

Press contact
For press inquiries, please contact ines.tondar@kunsthausbaselland.ch

Director/Curator: Ines Goldbach / Director’s Assistant: Martina Stähli / Assistant Curator, Communications and Publications: Ines Tondar / Organization Office: Salome Tramèr / Education: Leonie Vogt / Intern: Eva Grüninger