Renée Levi

Renée Levi is among Switzerland’s most significant artists working primarily in the medium of painting and installation. Her artwork has been exhibited internationally for more than 20 years, and also appears in significant public and private collections. She studied Architecture at the HTL Muttenz/ Basel and Fine Arts at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Zürich. From 2001 to 2023, Renée Levi has taught at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Basel. From the beginning, she worked with Marcel Schmid as a partner for large scale projects and installations. His concepts specify the spatial and technical context of exhibitions. Since the late 1990s, Renée Levi has been investigating the medium of painting, in her spatially extensive installations as she expands the effects of color and form to break the boundaries within the space. She merges painting and architecture in unconventional ways bringing to light a whole new set of dynamics within the medium. Levi was born in 1960 in Istanbul. She lives and works in Basel.

Her recent solo exhibitions include Galerie Mezzanin (Geneva, 2024); Philipp Zollinger (Zürich, 2023, 2021); Öktem Aykut (Istanbul, 2022); Villa du Parc (Annemasse, 2021); Musée d’Art, Histoire et Archéologie d’Évreux (2020); Museum Langmatt (Baden, 2019) and Istituto Svizzero Milan (2019). Her project at Biennale de Lyon (2019) marked as one of her most outstanding spatial interventions. The artist has been included in numerous group exhibitions, such as Kunsthalle Zurich (2023), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2023); Centre d’art Pasquart (Biel, 2022); MAMCO (Geneva, 2021); Istituto Svizzero Rome (2019); Kunstverein Munich (2015); Centre d’art contemporain, Villa du Parc Annemasse (2014) and at Frac Bretagne Rennes (2013). Renée Levi has received several awards, including the Prix de la Société des Arts de Genève, Arts Visuel, in 2019, and the Prix Meret Oppenheim in 2002. In 2023, Levi was selected and commissioned to make a permanent installation on the front façade of the Parliament Building in Bern, Switzerland for it’s 120th anniversary and for the 175th anniversary of the Swiss constitution. The installation Tilo, is named after Tilo Frey, one of the first twelve women elected to the National Council in 1971, and the first woman of African descent elected in the history of the confederation. Her solo project LA ELLE is currently on view at Palais de Tokyo.