Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Christies Europe will auction off an extraordinary art collection 21 and 22 June, the last of the artworks owned by Ernst Beyeler and his wife Hildy, whose collection has often been called one of the great private art collections of the 20th century.
Agency AFP reports that the collection sale will mark the close of the couple’s Basel gallery and includes work from iconic 20th century artists including Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, Matisse, Klee and Roy Lichtenstein.
The sale will come just two days after Art Basel ends. The artworks will be part of a Christies evening sale in London the 21st and day sale the 22nd.
Beyeler was the founder of Art Basel, the world’s largest contemporary and modern art fair (note: which last week announced it is adding a third fair, Art Hong Kong to the main fair and a second one, Art Basel Miami Beach).
His career in art took off when he transformed and developed the antiquarian bookshop of a former employer into
Beyeler Museum (photo, ©2011 Mark Niedermann / Beyeler Foundation)
the Beyeler Gallery in Basel, which allowed him to build his personal collection.
Ernst Beyeler died, age 88, in February 2010, two years after the death of his wife and close art partner Hildy.
He left instructions for the gallery to be closed upon his death, and the private and business collections to be sold, with proceeds to go to support the Beyeler Foundation in Basel.
The Foundation was created to provide a home, the Beyeler Museum, for the collection, and its purpose is to make the collection available to the public. The museum opened in 1997 and it has become hugely popular, with 300,000 visitors a year.
A Segantini exhibition that ended 25 April had pulled in 100,000 visitors between January 16 and 20 March.
Title: How Geneva has grown!
Location: Geneva, Maison Tavel
Link out: Click here
Description: “Comment Geneve a grandi!”, with photos from the Centre d’iconographie genevoise. Free. Closed 24, 25 December and 31 December, 1 January.
Start Date: 2009-04-02
End Date: 2010-03-21
Title: Exhibits: Celtic art and Albert Einstein
Location: Bern
Link out: Click here
Description: Celtica art: An exhibit of some 450 Celtic treasures from all over Europe. Magnificent jewellery and richly decorated utilitarian objects made from bronze, iron, silver and gold, precious grave goods and cult objects with complex patterns or representations of fantastic beings testify to the masterly artistic creation achieved by the Celts.
In the same museum Albert Einstein’s life as a permanent exhibit. Einstein was living in Bern when he created his famous formula E=mc2 and revolutionized conceptions of space and time.
Start Date: 20 Jun 2009
End Date: 18 Oct 2009
Hans Erni, age 100, in front of earlier self-portrait
Lucerne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Articulate, still handsome, far more interested in debating the state of the world than in basking in the recognition that has at last come to him: this is Hans Erni at the ripe age of 100. Visitors tend to walk up to him, awestruck by his age, and walk away from him having forgotten his age because he gives them too many other things to think about.
A career spanning 80 years, the globe – with peace an enduring theme
Erni is one of Switzerland’s finest 20th (and 21st) century artists, but he has only relatively recently been acknowledged as fully as he deserves. His career, spanning nearly 80 years, was celebrated in February with a major retrospective in Martigny at the Gianadda Foundation. The Kunstmuseum in Lucerne 24 May opened the first public museum showing of his work since 1979 with a collection that traces the development of the artist.
Erni was honoured in Geneva Saturday 6 June: his most recent project, a 60-metre peace fresco at the entrance to the United Nations building, the Palais des Nations, was unveiled at an outdoor ceremony open to the public. The year 2009 is a series of such events, throughout Switzerland – and Erni finds the energy to travel and participate in several of them.
Politics took their toll
It is not that Erni is an unknown artist: quite the opposite. He has a large popular following, his work is housed in the Hans Erni museum in Lucerne (an extension of the country’s most popular museum, the Transportation Museum) since 1979, and for decades he has been the guest of governments around the world.
Hans Erni with Yolanda Rojal, president of the Swiss foreign press association in Lucerne 16 May 2009
Hans Erni
Lucerne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Hans Erni, Swiss artist who celebrated his 100th birthday in February, has been named Swiss Personality of the Year 2008-2009 by the Foreign Press Association, which is based in Geneva.
Erni Saturday evening 16 May welcomed a small group of journalists to his museum next to the Swiss Transportation Museum in Lucerne, his hometown. He spoke passionately for 30 minutes, focusing on his continuing work to promote peace.
The artist’s new wall fresco, a series of ceramic panels that plea for peace, is currently being installed to cover 60 metres of cement wall at the United Nations building in Geneva. It will be unveiled 6 June in a public ceremony.
Title: Swiss museum day
Location: Switzerland
Link out: Click here
Description: Museums across Switzerland become a special “travel” destination for visitors.
Find out what each museum offers and pick one or several to visit in one day.
Date: 17 May 2009
Lausanne, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – Pascal Broulis, president of the Vaud cantonal council, met the local press Thursday to talk about his agenda post-summer holidays, and at the top of the list is the cantonal fine arts museum. The new lakefront Musée des beaux-arts project has come under intense pressure from citizen groups that do not want to see it move from the city centre, but Broulis, who has said in the past he didn’t care for the design, insists that the project must go ahead and that it will play a key role in securing Lausanne’s role as the centre of an increasingly dynamic Lake Geneva area.
Broulis also noted that lowering taxes while safeguarding the canton’s ability to be economically active is a priority for him. He is also the finance minister and he pointed out the very healthy state of the canton’s finances.
Title: Balthus – 100th anniversary
Location: Martigny
Description: Retrospective at the Fondation Pierre Gianadda
Start Date: 2008-06-16
End Date: 2008-11-23
