Art in Public Places - Today’s Artwork: "Martin Christ - Eltern und Kinder"

March 24, 2026

This insight describes one of 563 public artworks in Basel. If you’d like to explore more publicly accessible artworks, browse the full dataset on data.bs. Or even better—experience them in person by booking a tour with Artstübli – Kunst und Kultur.

Photo: Martin Christ, Eltern und Kinder.

The mural 'Eltern und Kinder' by Martin Christ at the Schulhaus Bruderholz is a historical document in paint, capturing the specific social ideals of its 1942 creation. Commissioned for a primary school, it served an explicit pedagogical purpose, using art to model a traditional family structure for the community's children. The composition is telling: the mother, central and devoted, faces the viewer, while the father, larger and elevated, turns away, carrying a boy on his shoulders who holds a Swiss flag. This arrangement visually reinforces hierarchies of gender and authority, framing the nuclear family as a cornerstone of national identity. Far from a spontaneous street expression, this work embodies a moment when public art was a deliberate tool for shaping civic values, making its preservation a direct window into the aesthetics and ideologies of Basel's past.

Figure 1: Location of Artwork "Martin Christ - Eltern und Kinder"

Data source: Kunst im öffentlichen Raum
Additional resources: Artstübli, street-art-cities, Urban Art in Basel

🤖 This text was generated with the assistance of AI. All quantitative statements are derived directly from the dataset listed under Data Source.