Exhibition examines new vocabulary that gave same-sex desire a place in art

The exhibition The First Homosexuals: The Birth of New Identities 1869–1939 at the Kunstmuseum Basel traces how the term “homosexual” first appeared in print in 1869, used in German by Hungarian author Karl Maria Kertbeny in a letter to lawyer Karl Heinrich Ulrichs. Co-curator Len Schaller says the show presents around 80 works made between 1869 and the outbreak of the Second World War that address early visibility of same-sex desire and gender diversity in art and literature. The Basel iteration, which previously opened at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago, places added emphasis on Swiss artists, contrasting works such as Ludwig von Hofmann’s Naked Fishermen and Boys on the Green Shore (c. 1900) with Paul Camenisch’s more explicit Bathers in the Breggia Gorge (1927). The exhibition runs at the Kunstmuseum Basel until 2 August.

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