Leiko Ikemura: Toward New Seas

Presenting drawings, paintings, and sculptures, Kunstmuseum Basel presents the retrospective dedicated to the Japanese-Swiss artist Leiko Ikemura at Neubau, mounted in consultation with the artist and in cooperation with the National Art Center, Tokyo.

Leiko Ikemura studied literature in Osaka and Spain before switching to painting and enrolling at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes in Seville in 1973. She subsequently lived in Zurich for several years; in the 1980s, she moved to Germany, where she still resides. In this first period of her oeuvre, she focuses on drawing, grappling with the challenges of devising an authentic creative idiom. Her art is propelled in part by a searching reflection on her own femininity and the attempt to carve out a place for her life as a woman between her native Japan and her adoptive home in Europe.