Revisiting: Fernweh, or Nostalgia for Unknown Lands

Kader Attia 

Kader Attia (b. 1970, Dugny) explores how experiences of deprivation, violence, suppression, and loss shape individuals and societies through their relationship with collective memory. In 2016, he founded La Colonie in Paris, a space dedicated to the exchange of ideas and critical public debate. 

Lynda Benglis 

Lynda Benglis (b. 1941, Lake Charles) emerged as a prominent figure during the Postminimalist movement, pushing the boundaries of painting and sculpture. She is best known for her celebrated “pours”, which resembled paintings yet broke free from the wall to occupy the space of sculpture. 

Vlassis Caniaris 

Vlassis Caniaris (1928, Athens – 2011, Athens) was a leading figure of Greek post-war art. Internationally recognised for his politically and socially engaged practice, he pioneered the use of assemblage and installation, transforming the Greek art scene with his innovative visual language. 

Marc Chagall 

Marc Chagall (1887, Lyozna – 1985, Saint-Paul-de-Vence) was a leading figure of the European avant-garde of the twentieth century. Combining elements of Cubism, Fauvism, and Symbolism, as well as folklore and personal memory, he developed a unique visual language celebrated for its vivid colour and dreamlike, poetic imagination. In 1973, the Musée National Marc Chagall opened in Nice as the first French national museum dedicated to a living artist. 

Marie-Gabriel-Florent-Auguste Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier 

Marie-Gabriel-Florent-Auguste Comte de Choiseul-Gouffier (1752, Paris – 1817, Aix-la-Chapelle) was a French diplomat, aristocrat, traveller, and antiquarian whose studies of Greece profoundly shaped eighteenth-century European perceptions of the ancient world. Yet, alongside his documentation of antiquities, he organised expeditions that led to the removal of numerous artefacts, many of which later entered European collections. 

William Nelson Copley 

William Nelson Copley (1919, New York – 1996, Sugarloaf Key) was an American self-taught painter, writer, gallerist, publisher, and collector. Renowned for his distinctive figurative style, his work combined humour, eroticism, politics, and autobiography with sharp social critique. Copley assembled one of the most significant collections of Dada and Surrealist art in the United States and played a major role in supporting and promoting avant-garde art. 

Claire Fontaine 

Claire Fontaine (founded 2004, Paris) is a feminist conceptual artist; a “readymade” art persona who lives and works in Palermo, created by Fulvia Carnevale and James Thornhill, an Italian-British artist duo who have declared themselves her assistants.   

Bouchra Khalili 

Bouchra Khalili (b. 1975, Casablanca) has developed a multidisciplinary practice that explores collective memory, migration, and political histories. Through carefully researched and collaborative forms of storytelling, her work amplifies the experiences and voices of displaced communities. Khalili is a founding member of La Cinémathèque de Tanger, an artist-run non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting film culture in northern Morocco. 

Brice Marden 

Brice Marden (1938, Bronxville – 2023, Tivoli) redefined the traditions of lyrical abstraction through his masterful command of colour and gesture. Inspired by his extensive travels and residences, including in Greece, he evolved from luminous monochromes to the intuitive calligraphic compositions that characterised his later practice. 

Martin Parr 

Martin Parr (1952, Epsom – 2025, Bristol) was one of the most influential photographers of his generation, internationally renowned for his singular approach to social documentary photography. Over a career spanning five decades, he produced an extensive body of work that redefined the genre. In 2017, he founded the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, extending his influence on contemporary photography and visual culture. 

Elizabeth Peyton 

Elizabeth Peyton (b. 1965, Danbury) reinvigorated portraiture in the early 1990s through her intimate, modestly scaled portraits of historical figures and icons of contemporary culture. From her earliest exhibitions, Peyton’s works polarised opinion in an art world that largely dismissed contemporary figurative pieces as irrelevant or passé. 

Niki de Saint Phalle and Jean Tinguely 

Niki de Saint Phalle (1930, Neuilly-sur-Seine – 2002, San Diego) and Jean Tinguely (1925, Fribourg – 1991, Bern) were pioneering figures of post-war European art whose enduring artistic partnership challenged conventional ideas of sculpture and artistic practice. While de Saint Phalle became renowned for her vibrant, monumental sculptures exploring themes of feminism, identity, and social justice, Tinguely transformed sculpture through his playful kinetic machines. Their shared vision of art as an act of experimentation and rebellion lives on through the collections of Museum Tinguely in Basel and the work of the Niki Charitable Art Foundation. 

Sean Scully 

Sean Scully (b. 1945, Dublin) has built over the past five decades one of the most influential bodies of work in contemporary abstraction. Bringing together the traditions of European painting and the language of American abstraction, his work balances painterly intensity with remarkable visual subtlety. 

Thomas Struth 

Thomas Struth (b. 1954, Geldern) is best known for his genre-defying photographic work, rooted in the tradition of the Düsseldorf School of Photography. Over four decades, he has continually expanded his visual vocabulary while remaining committed to the typological approach that lies at the heart of his practice.