Revealing Zürich’s artistic side

By Adam H. Graham

April 22, 2024

Zürich’s artistic face may sit in Art Basel’s shadow, but as writer and resident Adam H. Graham reveals, its art and architectural highlights are well worth seeking out.

Understand the understated

To truly appreciate Zürich’s austere, minimalist style, you must first unpack its penchant for the understated. Sparing and Alpine by nature, the city gave rise to the fanatical 15th-century Protestant reformist, Ulrich Zwingli, and Zürich’s creative expressionism became an act against the excessive baroque and ecclesiastic styles dictated by Rome. As religion was peeled back, so too was art and design, sparking a stark, functional aesthetic that dominates today.

Image credit: Zurich Tourism

A lab of architecture

The alums of Zürich’s topnotch technical university, ETH, include Pritzker Prize winners and greats, including Santiago Calatrava, Herzog & de Meuron, Peter Zumthor and Anne Lacaton. As a result, the city is an architecture lab, drawing design pilgrims year-round. An easy walk from the Mandarin Oriental Savoy, Zurich is Christ & Gantenbein’s Swiss National Museum, Shigeru Ban’s Tamedia headquarters, Calatrava’s Stadelhofen Station and Pavillon Le Corbusier, the Swiss-born modernist’s last project and always a favourite of my visiting architecture friends.

Kunsthaus expansion

The constellation of buildings at Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland’s largest art museum, received a new star in 2021. Pritzker laureate David Chipperfield designed the svelte new structure with vertical exterior fins hewn from local Jurassic limestone, while the cavernous interior’s gossamer walls and geometric staircases offer a temple-like atmosphere for statement exhibits.

Image credit: Franca Candrian

The birthplace of Dada

Kunsthaus’s permanent collection includes 100,000 works, from Picassos, Van Goghs and Renaissance masterpieces to contemporary works by Cindy Sherman and Alex Katz. It also holds the world’s largest collection of Dada art, a movement eschewing capitalism and logic founded here in 1916, including pieces by Hans Arp, Hannah Höch, Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Man Ray.

Image credit: Franca Candrian

Private galleries are influential

Zürich’s art galleries have long been favourites of collectors. Before expanding to London, the influential Hauser & Wirth gallery opened here in 1992 and moved to a space in the brewery-turned-art complex Löwenbräu Areal. Other power players include Eva Presenhuber, Mai 36, and Häusler Contemporary, which represents colour-shifting light artist James Turrell.

The streets are a gallery too

You needn’t wander far from the hotel to discover the city’s public art. Niki de Saint Phalles’ floating angel is in Zürich Hauptbahnhof (the main train station); Jean Tinguely’s Heureka and Henry Moore’s Sheep awaits at Zürichhorn; while the Bahnofstrasse’s video installation by Julian Opie and the continuously changing Bally lettermark sign by design agency WBG are two of my personal favourites.

Image credit: Zurich Tourism

An interior-design masterclass in a bar

Zürich’s interiors are sanctuaries from the everyday. When I want to impress visiting designer and artist friends, I take them to the Kronenhalle Bar, set inside a meticulously old-school restaurant that Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, James Joyce and Richard Strauss all frequented. The bar was designed by Swiss architects Trix and Robert Haussmann in 1965, a timeless space with artworks from Picasso, Míro and Chagall, while Diego Giacometti designed the red Carrara marble tables and alabaster light fixtures.

Today’s artists

You won’t find the city’s creatives on busy Bahnhofstrasse. Idaplatz, Helvetiaplatz and Limmatplatz draw next-gen artists, as do lesser-known museums such as Musée Visionnaire, devoted to Art Brut, and Haus Konstruktiv, showcasing constructivist-concrete and conceptual art. Museum für Gestaltung, meanwhile, teems with Swiss-designed objects, fashion and furniture.

Insider MO tip

The Marc Chagall windows at Kirche Frauminster are a major tourist draw – but it’s the Sigmar Polke windows inside Grossmunster we’re nudging you to. A two-minute walk across the medieval bridge spanning the Limmat River, these seven semi-precious stone naves offer a contemporary take on stained glass that better expresses Zürich’s love of all things understated and contemporary.

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About the Author

Adam H. Graham

Graham is an American journalist based in Zürich; his work features in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Condé Nast Traveler. When he’s not in Japan on assignment, you can find him swimming, eating cheese, hiking the Alps and revelling in Switzerland’s fully functional trams and trains.