Basel | ArtRegion: Basel - Oberrhein

Nicolas Krupp

The book on the shelf

Curated by Kaspar Müller

10. Mai – 28. Juni 2025

Art Basel Week 2025 Opening Hours (16 – 22 June) Mon-Sat 10:30-19:30 ★Tue until 21

My gaze searches for something in the room to anchor my thoughts, now having to write a short text, I feel the urgency to resist impulsive conclusions, as it catches on an extremely thin paperback on my shelf: Stefan Zweig’s Chess Story. Reflexively, I read the blurb on the back.

“For only ambition is sparked by the accident of success and easy accomplishment, but nothing so magnificently uplifts the heart as the downfall of a person in battle against the invincible power of fate— this most sublime of all tragedies, which is sometimes crafted by a poet, and a thousand times by life itself.” Stefan Zweig

The quote reads generalizing, but I’ve also never actually read the book, even though I possess a collection of his works. As the famous book is really incredibly thin, the thinnest in my entire shelf and it sits right in the middle, I finally read it.

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Michelle Grabner
Joanne Greenbaum
Richard Hawkins
Jörg Immendorff
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Beatrice Marchi
Franco Mazzucchelli
Susanne Paesler
Michael Stevenson
Walter Swennen
Peter Wächtler
Heimo Zobernig
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