BASEL.- With its ArtShaker app, the Fondation Beyeler is for the first time launching an interactive app for giving existing pictures a new look. Inspired by art movements like Cubism and Pop Art, the more than 20 different filters enable members of the public to transform their own photos into very personal masterpieces. The app for iPhones and iPads is immediately available as a free download from App Store.

It takes individual creativity to transform day-to-day subjects into fascinating or funny pictures with the ArtShaker app. Its users can create a Cubist-style portrait of themselves that Picasso could have painted. They can transform their favourite star into a Pop Art picture. Or they can make their own garden seem as if Impressionists designed it.

With its ArtShaker app, the most-visited art museum in Switzerland is for the first time presenting an interactive instrument designed for anyone who enjoys creating pictures. The app includes more than 20 filters which can be superimposed on users’ own photos or on photographed artworks and which offer colour, form, light and composition effects, activated by shaking or fine hand movements along different axes, through which users can edit and rearrange the original images. Shaking thus becomes the typical hand movement for ArtShaker users. It is the typical hand movement of shaking that has given the new app its name. The ArtShaker app exists in four languages: German, French, English and Italian.

The ArtShaker app is immediately available from App Store as a free download. With a little luck, you can win an art weekend in Berlin, one of five cool sets of Beats by Dr. Dre headphones or one of 10xCHF 100 H&M vouchers. The deadline for sending in photos for the competition is 29 November 2013: it is worth downloading the app early.

When combined with users’ own photos, the more than 20 filters in the app, which are inspired by artistic styles made famous by painters like Picasso, Monet and Warhol, offer thousands of creative possibilities and new images. The app also provides interesting background information about many artists and the most important art movements in the 20th century. Anyone using it will learn in a playful way about art and art history, triggering their own creativity in a witty, interactive way.

Like the very successful book What is Art, which came out in 2012 in four languages and which The Art Newspaper described as one of the best art publications of the year, the ArtShaker app was created through cooperation with the Fondation Beyeler’s art education team and with the support of UBS – Partner for Art Education for Families and Young People.

The Fondation Beyeler in Riehen/Basel regularly holds major exhibitions of the work of eminent artists ranging from Classic Modernism right up to the present day, accompanied by presentations of the legendary Beyeler collection, which includes around 250 works by artists such as Van Gogh, Monet, Cézanne, Picasso, Rothko and Bacon, along with many others. The museum offers a comprehensive programme of associated events such as guided tours, interviews with artists, concerts and workshops.

On 20 October 2013, the Family Sunday being held in connection with the Thomas Schütte exhibition will include not just a museum game and workshops for children and adults but also, for the first time, a workshop on the ArtShaker app.

The most original ArtShaker app pictures will be regularly presented on the Fondation Beyeler’s Facebook page.