Wilhelm Schmid Museum

The museum in the Brè district dedicated to Wilhelm Schmid (1892-1971) is located in the house where the Aargau painter lived.

Schmid was a leading exponent of the artistic ferments of early 20th-century Berlin. Among the founders of the Novembergruppe, he is considered the only leading Swiss of the New Objectivity and Magic Realism in northern Europe. In 1937, after his work was deemed degenerate by the Nazis, he returned to Switzerland and settled in Brè. By testamentary disposition of his wife Maria, the City became the owner of their home and more than a thousand paintings and drawings.

The exhibition itinerary, entirely redesigned in 2021 for the 50th anniversary of the painter's death, documents the main moments of Schmid's artistic evolution and includes, in addition to a selection of paintings, architectural plans, ceramics, photographs, and some of the furniture and wall decorations he made. The collection constitutes the largest and qualitatively most prestigious corpus of his work.

For the 2026 seasonal opening, the permanent exhibition is enriched by a temporary show dedicated to the artist Mariapia Borgnini, which forms part of the cycle of solo exhibitions at the Schmid Museum in Brè devoted to artists of artistic furnishings in the historic village center. For this exhibition, Mariapia Borgnini presents a project entitled The blue sky does not doubt its blue, developed starting from the evocative location of the museum: the small village of Brè atop the mountain of the same name. The views that can be enjoyed from the museum’s rooms, together with the iconic image of the mountain and the lake, have inspired the theme of the exhibition, to which all the works on display are connected.