23.09.2026 14:00 - 17:00
Kunsthaus Interlaken, Jungfraustrasse 55, 3800 Interlaken
Since the Kunsthaus opened in 2009, painting has been at the heart of our program. The current exhibition is dedicated to a central theme in the visual arts since antiquity: the portrayal of the human figure, which has changed repeatedly over time.
Is the depiction of the human figure in art progressing or regressing? This is the question posed by the Danish art historian Julius Lange in the concluding section of his nearly
600-page work *The Human Form in the History of Art* (Heitz Publishers, Strasbourg, 1903). And he immediately provides the answer from the perspective of his time: If we are to answer the question of which has greater value—the purely objective conception of the human form as it appears to the sense of sight, or the expression of subjective life through time—the answer will likely favor the latter. We cannot deny the art of our own age; if it did not correspond exactly to what interests us, it would, after all, take on forms other than those it has …
The exhibition *A Beautiful Back Can Also Delight* shows how artists of our time see and depict human beings. The works on display—almost exclusively paintings, including numerous so-called “back figures” that inspired the exhibition’s title—question the meaning and meaninglessness of earthly life or simply reveal its various facets, from the greatest joys to the deepest disappointments, from birth to death. As they wander through the exhibition, visitors pass through rooms with vastly different atmospheres, encountering creatures from reality and fantasy, from dreams and nightmares …
Guided tour of the exhibition
October 11, October 25, and November 8, 2026, at 11 a.m. each day
Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.
Is the depiction of the human figure in art progressing or regressing? This is the question posed by the Danish art historian Julius Lange in the concluding section of his nearly
600-page work *The Human Form in the History of Art* (Heitz Publishers, Strasbourg, 1903). And he immediately provides the answer from the perspective of his time: If we are to answer the question of which has greater value—the purely objective conception of the human form as it appears to the sense of sight, or the expression of subjective life through time—the answer will likely favor the latter. We cannot deny the art of our own age; if it did not correspond exactly to what interests us, it would, after all, take on forms other than those it has …
The exhibition *A Beautiful Back Can Also Delight* shows how artists of our time see and depict human beings. The works on display—almost exclusively paintings, including numerous so-called “back figures” that inspired the exhibition’s title—question the meaning and meaninglessness of earthly life or simply reveal its various facets, from the greatest joys to the deepest disappointments, from birth to death. As they wander through the exhibition, visitors pass through rooms with vastly different atmospheres, encountering creatures from reality and fantasy, from dreams and nightmares …
Guided tour of the exhibition
October 11, October 25, and November 8, 2026, at 11 a.m. each day
Note: This text was translated by machine translation software and not by a human translator. It may contain translation errors.