Exhibition tour “A Dream of a Ball Gown” | Adelheid Duvanel at the open art museum

‘A dream of a ball gown’ is the first public exhibition of artistic works from the UPK Basel's picture storage. The exhibition extends the Hidden Treasures from Swiss Psychiatric Clinics series, which draws attention to collections and artistic convolutes that are unknown to the public.

Following the presentation at the University Psychiatric Clinics (UPK) Basel between December 2024 and March 2025, the exhibition can now be seen at the open art museum, the centre for Swiss Outsider Art, Art Brut and Naive Art - supplemented by additional works that provide a deeper insight into the collection. The aim is also to open up new perspectives on healing art and creative ways of promoting mental health.

Most of the works from the UPK Basel picture collection were created by patients on site between 1960 and 1990. On the one hand, they are a reflection of society and the understanding of psychiatry and mental health at the time. On the other hand, they are direct testimonies to an individual and often intensive examination of personal life motifs and the constant struggle for the right form and the right material.

The works on display act as social seismographs. They reflect the perception of the world at different times in a personal, direct way. The works tell of the search for stability, for meaning - and of the approach to what is, as well as to what is lost or hidden and longed for.

At the same time, the open art museum is dedicating a comprehensive exhibition of drawings and paintings to the Basel writer and artist Adelheid Duvanel (1936–1996). While her delicate, laconic text miniatures have long been considered among the most distinctive voices in Swiss literature, her visual art has received little recognition to date.

In 2009, the open art museum presented its first retrospective with loans from the Swiss Literary Archives, the UPK Basel, and the Dammann Collection. This exhibition brought an important group of works from the collection of her brother Felix Feigenwinter to the museum. In 2021, another 40 drawings were added. At the same time, numerous publications appeared that shed new light on Duvanel's literary and visual art.

The current exhibition now brings together groups of works from the museum's collection with paintings from the UPK Basel's picture archive. It once again showcases Adelheid Duvanel's impressive visual world – art that tells the story of otherness, loneliness, and the longing for security in an unvarnished yet sensitive way. Although Adelheid Duvanel was active as a writer in the professional cultural scene, she was not influenced by artistic trends, fashions, or the Basel art scene. A tightrope walker in life, she remained an outsider in art as well, using artistic means to work through her own issues. Thus, the award-winning writer became an outsider artist. However, her drawings should not be understood as biographical illustrations, but rather as independent forms of artistic expression.