Art Basel's European edition brings the international art world together, with more than 280 of the world's leading galleries showing the work of over 4,000 artists, ranging from Modern Art's great masters to the youngest generation's emerging stars. A full program of art world talks takes place each day. Further afield, exhibitions and events are offered by the renowned cultural institutions of Basel and the entire region, creating an exciting art week for visitors.

SIGMAR POLKE, CAROL RAMA, AND TOSHIO YOSHIDA HEADLINE FERGUS MCCAFFREY’S 2016 ART BASEL PRESENTATION.

Fergus McCaffrey has a strong reputation as an advocate of underrecognized members of the postwar avant-garde. The gallery’s specialization in Japanese art has been augmented by a selected group of European and American artists, all of whom share a common interest in disparate materials and unconventional art-making processes.

In discussing disparate materials and unconventional techniques, it seems natural to start with Gutai Group founder Jiro Yoshihara (1905–1972), who in 1954 stated, “Gutai Art does not alter matter. Gutai Art imparts life to matter. Gutai Art does not distort matter.” In recent years, critical attention has focused less on Yoshihara’s own art and more on his activities as a teacher and mentor within Gutai; at Art Basel, we will refocus attention on Yoshihara as an artist by showing a large selection of his paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from the 1950s and 1960s. The three sculptures are remarkable as having been included in the legendary Experimental Outdoor Modern Art Exhibition to Challenge the Midsummer Burning Sun in Ashiya City in 1955.

Until very recently, the work of Yoshihara’s fellow Gutai artist Toshio Yoshida (1911–1995) was hardly known in either Japan or the West. However, the gallery, in collaboration with the Yoshida family, is undertaking documentation of the artist’s staggeringly innovative career. At the fair, we will present works created between 1953 and 1972 that range from Burn paintings to experiments with foam rubber, plastic tape, and plaster—all of which predate stylistic developments in Europe and the United States. Of particular importance are two Brushstroke, paintings from 1956, which were exhibited in the second and third Gutai exhibitions, in 1956 and 1957.

In advance of our exhibition of Carol Rama (1918–2015) in September in New York, the gallery will present a selection of the artist’s Bricolage works from the 1960s and Gomma assemblages from the 1970s. A self-taught artist from Turin, Rama rejected adherence to any one specific style or method during her seven-decade career. However, Rama’s idiosyncratic use of materials—dolls’ eyes, medical syringes, animal claws, rubber, and bicycle inner tires—is tied to her personal history and mythologized biography.

Mario Schifano (1934–1998) was a principal figure in the large, loose-knit group that frequented the Caffè Rosati in Piazza del Popolo, Rome. A constant experimenter and image inventor, Schifano made paintings using concrete in the late 1950s before briefly turning to abstract canvases. As early as 1962, he began to incorporate fragments of advertising logos from American brands such as Coca-Cola and Esso into his paintings and landscapes, using exuberantly drippy brushwork. Later in the 1960s, he added Plexiglas to his paintings, before appropriating images shot from television screens in the 1970s and 1980s. The gallery will present selected paintings and works on paper dating from 1964 to the 1980s.

The gallery has had a long-standing relationship with Sigmar Polke (1941–2010), who was one of the most celebrated German artists of his generation. He developed a homemade and provocative Pop aesthetic, beginning in the 1960s, that employed raster dots, found fabric, household paint, and ballpoint pen, frequently in a mash-up of abstraction and representation. Polke’s experimentation with film and photography in the 1970s paved the way for his enormously innovative practice of the 1980s and beyond, which employed experimental techniques including unstable pigments, novel photographic practices, and photocopy machines. At the fair, the gallery will present works created between 1963 and 2002.