ArtBohemia

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Masterpieces of the Fondation Beyeler

Ernst Beyeler and his collection
by Franz Smola

Ernst Beyeler was born on the 16th of July 1921 in Basel. His father, a railway official,
had to work hard to provide for their five children. There was no room for art in the
lives of his parents. Ernst Beyeler attended lectures in economics and art history at
the University of Basel from 1940 to 1945, during which time he was often called
up for military service. After the death of his employer and mentor Oskar Schloss in
1945, Beyeler took over Schloss’s antiquarian bookshop situated at Bäumleingasse 9
in the center of Basel.

The Art Dealer
From 1947 onwards, Beyeler started to sell artworks as well as
books. The first sales exhibitions organized by Beyeler all centered around graphic art,
such as Japanese woodcuts, the graphic works of Toulouse-Lautrec and those of the
Impressionists. Bookselling gradually fell by the wayside and from 1951 Ernst Beyeler
dedicated himself exclusively to art. In 1953, the young art dealer organized his first
exhibition of paintings, which featured works by Gauguin, Matisse and Picasso. Early
on, his gallery’s main emphasis was on Classical Modernism. He also started to present
non-European artworks, such as examples of pre-Columbian art or African Tribal art.
From the very beginning, Ernst Beyeler distinguished himself from other art dealers
by publishing opulent, large-scale catalogues to accompany his summer exhibitions.
These volumes soon became his gallery’s signature feature. Very often, they would
inadvertently fall into the hands of artists and art collectors, who thus became
aware of this still relatively unknown Basel gallery. Even then, the summer exhibitions
already featured works by high-profile artists such as Bonnard, Picasso, Léger, Klee and
Giacometti, to name but a few.

Beyeler and the Thompson Collection
During his early years as a gallery owner, Ernst Beyeler already managed to reach out
to eminent art collectors, many of whom were from the US. Towards the end of the
1950s, Beyeler came to the attention of the American collector G. David Thompson
from Pittsburgh. Thompson was a wealthy steel magnate who, at the time, owned
one of the most comprehensive collections of contemporary art, which he intended
to enlarge through acquisitions and bartering, before eventually selling it. Thompson
quickly recognized Ernst Beyeler as a talented businessman and repeatedly entrusted
him with selling large parts of his collection. Beyeler successfully brokered a deal to sell
the majority of the approximately 100 works by Paul Klee in Thompson’s possession
to the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which was in the process of founding
its own collection in Düsseldorf. Shortly afterwards, Thompson handed over another
important part of his collection to Beyeler, comprising around 340 works by masters
of Classical Modernism such as Schwitters, Matisse, Mondrian, Miró, Picasso, Léger
and Pollock, large parts of which Beyeler skillfully sold to eminent private and public
collections. Finally, Thompson trusted Beyeler with his Giacometti collection, the most
comprehensive any collector had hitherto compiled of the artist. Irrespective of political
oppositions and with a willingness to take an entrepreneurial risk, Beyeler, together with
the brothers Hans and Walter Bechtler, established the Alberto Giacometti Foundation,
and through it managed to secure Thompson’s Giacometti collection for Switzerland. A
large portion of the collection went to the Kunsthaus Zürich, while the Kunstmuseum
Basel and the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, with which the patrons Hans Grether and
Balthasar Reinhart were also involved, received works as well. Only a few years later,
the market price for sculptures by Alberto Giacometti went up many times over what
Beyeler had paid Thompson just a short while before.

Beyeler and Picasso
Pablo Picasso had also become aware of Beyeler’s opulent catalogues and they first met
in 1957. Over the following years, Picasso came to trust Beyeler so implicitly that he
allowed Beyeler to choose artworks from his collection – a privilege Picasso had not
even granted his long-standing art dealer Kahnweiler. In 1966 Beyeler obtained 26 of
the 45 chosen works by Picasso, which he later presented in several large-scale Picasso
exhibitions in his gallery. Beyeler was most taken with Picasso’s early Cubist works. He
managed to acquire the privately owned painting Woman (“Demoiselles d’Avignon”
period) of 1907, which played a central role in the emergence of Cubism and is considered
one of the most important works of the Fondation Beyeler today. Picasso was not the
only artist interested in getting to know Beyeler. Among many others was Mark Tobey,
who even lived in an old townhouse in immediate proximity to the Galerie Beyeler from
1960 until his death in 1976.

Friend of the Masters
Beyeler was also acquainted with Roy Lichtenstein and had
personally met many of the most eminent artists of his time, such as Braque, Chagall,
Arp, Ernst, Nicholson, Albers, Giacometti and Moore. However, he hardly ever acquired
the exclusive rights for selling works by a particular artist, with the exception of Jean
Dubuffet, who later switched to a gallery in the US.
Over the years, the Galerie Beyeler acquired an impressive network of clients from all
over the world, but mostly from the US. Beyeler managed time and again to obtain
whole collections and to sell them on in their entirety, as was the case with large parts
of the Parisian Cuttoli collection in the 1970s, the majority of the Parisian Pellequer
collection in the 1980s as well as the Weil collection in St. Louis. Even the then Empress
of Persia featured among Beyeler’s clients. During his sixty years as a gallery owner, Ernst
Beyeler bought and sold roughly 16.000 artworks. Many of these works were shown for
the first time during the more than two hundred monographic and topical exhibitions
held at the Galerie Beyeler, which were often supplemented by works not for sale, but
loaned to the gallery by private collectors or museums. The Swiss art museums also
benefited from the international renown of the Galerie Beyeler. The Kunstmuseum Basel
in particular purchased some important paintings from the gallery and occasionally
received works as permanent loans.

ART Basel Founder
Ernst Beyeler made another important contribution to the art world by co-founding the international art fair ART Basel, on whose organizing committee he served as a member until 1992 and which is now considered the most
significant art fair for modern and contemporary art on the European continent.
Ernst Beyeler always received great support from his wife, Hildy. With her keen eye for
art, she expertly advised her husband and often ensured that important works of art
did not leave the gallery. The Beyelers’ modest home in Riehen, which the Basel painter
Paul Basilius Barth (1881 -1955) had incidentally built for himself in 1935/36,1 had soon
become too small for their private paintings, so that many of them were stored in a
depot reserved for those works that were not to be sold. The couple often succeeded
in retaining particularly eminent works of art and even, on occasion, in buying them
back. The couple’s shrewd judgment, dubbed the “Beyeler-eye”, had long since become
legendary among members of the art world.

Collecting "proven" Art

Their main focus was on collecting “proven”
works of art 2.Trials were conducted privately, when works could be observed over a
longer period of time and under varying circumstances. Their intention as collectors
was not to compile a history of modern art; rather their collector’s passion arose out
of the deep sense of sympathy which they came to feel for every single work in their
possession. A work’s singularity and constancy were the main criteria when choosing
their collection. Rather than works that pleased, it was the strong, often “difficult”
pieces, such as require the beholder’s full attention, which appealed to the couple 3.
Among Beyeler’s many preferred artists, the likes of Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet,
Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, Francis Bacon, Jackson Pollock, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy
Warhol stand out. With some artists, it was his aim to assemble different groups of their
works in order to be able to comprehend and convey all facets of that artist’s personality.
Today, these monographic compilations within the Beyeler collection are particularly
renowned the world over. The Fondation Beyeler owns 33 paintings, graphic works
and sculptures by Picasso alone, seven paintings of which hail from the artist’s Cubist
period. Other impressive compilations include twenty late works by Paul Klee, twelve
paintings by Jean Dubuffet, another twelve works by Fernand Léger, seven paintings
by Piet Mondrian, six paintings and one bronze by Joan Miró as well as four paintings
by Francis Bacon. Beyeler’s Alberto Giacometti collection is entirely unique. The central
piece of this compilation is a group of figures which Alberto Giacometti had designed
for the Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York in 1960, but had never put up. It is made up
of an impressive Homme qui marche II standing almost two meters tall, two large-scale
Grandes femmes as well as a bust entitled Grande tête. Beyeler was also particularly
interested in contemporary American painters such as Rothko, Newman, Rauschenberg
and Lichtenstein. Their works reveal an emphasis on contemporary American art unique
in European collections of this scale.
foundation.

International Exhibitions and a Museum by Renzo Piano
These works were presented to the public for the first time in 1989, although
not in Switzerland, but in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid,
followed by further exhibitions in Berlin and Sydney. The Swiss public, however, would
receive permanent access to the collection as construction work for a museum situated
at Berower Park in Riehen near Basel and designed by the internationally acclaimed
architect Renzo Piano began in 1994. Since its opening in 1997, the Beyeler Museum
has further enriched a country already wealthy in private collections and continues
to attract art enthusiasts from all over the world. Interacting with the surrounding
gardens, the building’s bright halls display the artworks from the Beyeler collection to
an aesthetic advantage and effect unrivalled by most other museums.
Ernst Beyeler proceeded to direct the affairs of his new museum with great dedication
and commitment. His efforts were assisted by eminent art historians and experienced
museum directors such as Markus Brüderlin, the long-standing curator of the Beyeler
collection and Christoph Vitali. In 2007 Georg Krayer was appointed president of the
administrative board and in 2008 Sam Keller became the museum’s new director. In
2009 Ernst Beyeler resigned from his post as president of the foundation council to
be succeeded by Hansjörg Wyss. The numerous exhibitions shown since 1997 have all
served to elevate the works of the Beyeler collection to the highest academic level and
have firmly embedded them into the fascinating context of international art. Beyeler
has also contributed to exhibitions in other museums, among them the Kunstmuseum
Basel and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. And it was owing to Beyeler’s
initiative and considerable financial support, that two important sculpture exhibitions
were able to take place – “Skulptur im 20. Jahrhundert” in 1980 at Wenken Park in Riehen
and an exhibition on sculptures from the 19th century to the present held in 1984 in
Brüglingen. A reminder of this emphasis on sculpture can be found at the museum’s
park today, in the shape of the mobile/stabile designed by Alexander Calder in 1966
entitled The Tree.
Like most other museums, the Beyeler collection did not manage to escape many of the
problems facing cultural institutions and the art market especially during the 1990s.
Beyeler, too, was confronted with restitution claims for artworks seized by the Nazi
regime. In the early 1950s, Beyeler had bought the 1910 painting Improvisation 10 by
Wassily Kandinsky for a large sum from the Berlin art dealer Ferdinand Möller, one of
the few dealers who had managed to sell artworks confiscated by the Nazis abroad. The
regime had seized the painting in 1937 from the modern-day state museum of Hanover
as “degenerate art”. In the 1990s, the descendants of the painting’s former owner
Sophie Küppers-Lissitzky filed restitution claims against Beyeler. The issue dragged on
for several years until Beyeler and the heirs settled on a substantial compensation.4
Thus Beyeler ensured that Kandinsky’s work, which after all is considered to be the first
non-objective painting in modern art history, remained in the Beyeler Museum.
Ernst Beyeler received due recognition for his achievements from various institutions. In
1985 he was awarded the French order Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and
in 1998 another French order, that of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, was bestowed
on him. In 1987 the University of Basel conferred an honorary doctorate upon Beyeler.
Together with his wife Hildy, Beyeler founded the “Art for Tropical Forests Foundation” in
2001. In 2008 he had to mourn the death of his wife Hildy and two years later, on the
25th of February 2010, Ernst Beyeler passed away in Riehen aged 88.
Looking at the number of paintings in their possession, which is relatively small compared
to other private collections, it soon becomes apparent that Ernst and Hildy Beyeler were
never interested in quantity, but always in the highest quality. The Beyeler Museum
comprises around two hundred paintings and sculptures from the Classical Modern
and contemporary periods as well as some twenty objects of Oceanic and African Tribal
art. Based on sixty years of experience as a renowned gallery owner, the collection is
the result of Beyeler’s stringent selection process, characterized by a sense of passion
and tenacity, which revealed itself particularly when Beyeler wanted to retain priceless
works for his collection. Thus the Beyeler Museum is shaped more than any other
museum by the will and taste of its founder and collector. Rarely can masterpieces of
European and American Modernism be experienced on such a condensed and elevated
level as in the Fondation Beyeler.