The Daros Collection is a Swiss private collection of modern art owned by the Stephan Schmidheiny family. [1] At its core are comprehensive groups of work by Andy Warhol, Brice Marden, Cy Twombly, Willem de Kooning and Gerhard Richter.
The Daros Collection is a Swiss private collection of modern art owned by the Stephan Schmidheiny family. [1] At its core are comprehensive groups of work by Andy Warhol, Brice Marden, Cy Twombly, Willem de Kooning and Gerhard Richter.
The groups of work in the Daros Collection document key movements and positions in the world of art. It comprises around 250 individual items, with the primary focus being on North American and European art from the second half of the 20th century. Besides important exponents of American Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimal Art and the New York art scene of the 1980s, it also features other precursors and pioneers of current contemporary art. [2]
Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louise Bourgeois, Mark Bradford, Robert Gober, Philipp Guston, Ellsworth Kelly, Willem de Kooning, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman, Barnett Newman, Sigmar Polke, Jackson Pollock, Gerhard Richter, Mark Rothko, Robert Ryman, Thomas Schütte, Richard Serra, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Christopher Wool
The Daros Collection was established in 1997. Following his brother Alexander Schmidheiny’s death at a young age, Stephan Schmidheiny had inherited his wide-ranging collection of more than 1,000 individual items, which Alexander together with his childhood friend Thomas Ammann had assembled. In addition to outstanding works by Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, unique holdings of Andy Warhol and Cy Twombly formed the core of the collection. Stephan Schmidheiny decided to sharpen the collection’s profile and expand it further, entrusting its management to a professional set-up named Daros. [3]
Initially, Daros concentrated on collecting US art from the second half of the 20th century. At the turn of the millennium, the decision was taken to sell off numerous works – including examples by Francesco Clemente, David Reed, Philip Taaffe and Ross Bleckner – and include new artistic positions. Works by artists such as Gerhard Richter, Agnes Martin, Bruce Nauman and Louise Bourgeois were acquired, with the key criterion being their significance in the development of contemporary art. [4]
Over the past decade, Daros has consistently focused the collection on important groups of work by major artists. [5] Further key works by Abstract Expressionists such as Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning have been acquired, while the existing holdings of Gerhard Richter have been expanded into a significant corpus. Daros has also extended its reach to encompass larger groups by artists such as Christopher Wool and Thomas Schütte, while initial purchases have been made for new collections of important artists such as Philip Guston and Mark Bradford. Daros has also shown its commitment to leading museums in recent years. The Stephan Schmidheiny family / Daros supported the building of the new Tate Modern in London in 2000 and its extension in 2016, [6] as well as the extension project of the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen (Switzerland). [7]
In the 1990s, Stephan Schmidheiny built up an industrial group in Latin America, and at the end of the decade Daros thus also turned its attention to contemporary Latin American art. The Daros Latinamerica Collection was established in 2000 separately from the Daros Collection to allow the two to develop independently of each other. [8] Today it is one of the most comprehensive private collections of contemporary Latin American art.
Since 2010, the Daros Collection has been working closely with the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen near Basel, which has incorporated groups of work from Daros into its own collection displays. [9] Daros is also supporting the Fondation Beyeler’s planned extension, making a generous donation to lay the cornerstone for this project. [10]
Between 2001 and 2008 Daros staged its own exhibitions, displaying works in temporary presentations at the Daros Exhibitions galleries in Zurich’s Löwenbräu Areal. This space was also used by the Daros Latinamerica Collection. [25]
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art. The museum's current collection includes over 33,000 works of painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, design, and media arts, and moving into the 21st century. The collection is displayed in 170,000 square feet (16,000 m2) of exhibition space, making the museum one of the largest in the United States overall, and one of the largest in the world for modern and contemporary art.
Dia Art Foundation is a nonprofit organization that initiates, supports, presents, and preserves art projects. It was established in 1974 by Philippa de Menil, the daughter of Houston arts patron Dominique de Menil and an heiress to the Schlumberger oil exploration fortune; art dealer Heiner Friedrich, Philippa's husband; and Helen Winkler, a Houston art historian. Dia provides support to projects "whose nature or scale would preclude other funding sources."
Gerhard Richter is a German visual artist. Richter has produced abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, and also photographs and glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary German artists and several of his works have set record prices at auction.
Sigmar Polke was a German painter and photographer.
Michel Majerus was a Luxembourgish artist who combined painting with digital media in his work. He lived and worked in Berlin until his untimely death in a plane crash in November 2002.
Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly Jr. was an American painter, sculptor and photographer.
The Pinakothek der Moderne is a modern art museum, situated in central Munich's Kunstareal.
Stephan Ernst Schmidheiny is a Swiss businessman, industrialist and philanthropist. He is a prominent member of the Schmidheiny family. In 2023, his net worth was estimated by Handelszeitung to be $3.75 billion. He's also well known for being convicted over his role in the Italian asbestos scandal.
Thomas E. Ammann was a leading Swiss art dealer in Impressionist and twentieth century art, and a collector of post-war and contemporary art.
The Brandhorst Museum was opened in Munich on 21 May 2009. It displays about 200 exhibits from collection of modern art of the heirs of the Henkel trust Udo and Anette Brandhorst. In 2009 the Brandhorst Collection comprises more than 700 works.
The Beyeler Foundation or Fondation Beyeler, with its museum in Riehen, near Basel (Switzerland), owns and oversees the art collection of Hildy and Ernst Beyeler, which features modern and traditional art. The Beyeler Foundation museum includes a space for special exhibitions staged to complement the permanent collection. In 2006, approximately 340,000 persons visited the museum. The number of visitors in 2016 was 332,000. The Beyeler Foundation is the most visited museum of art in all of Switzerland. The museum is properly funded, and it receives annual grants from the cantons of Basel City and Basel County and the commune of Riehen. Major partners of the Foundation are Bayer AG, Novartis and Swiss bank UBS.
Artist Rooms is a touring collection of international modern and contemporary art in the United Kingdom, established through the d'Offay donation in 2008. Comprising over 1,500 works by 38 artists, it is owned by National Galleries Scotland and Tate which care for the collection together and arrange for its presentation throughout the UK in museums, galleries, and exhibition spaces. Each "room" is devoted to a specific artist with the aim of providing an immersive and comprehensive experience of that artist's work, a format described by Nicholas Serota as being "without precedent anywhere in the world."
Parkett was an international magazine specializing in art. The magazine ceased publication in Summer 2017 with its 100th issue and now continues online as a time capsule and archive with some 270 in-depth artists portraits, artists documents, newsletters and more at www.parkettart.com.
The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art is a privately owned contemporary art gallery in Oslo in Norway. It was founded and opened to the public in 1993. The collection's main focus is the American appropriation artists from the 1980s, but it is currently developing towards the international contemporary art scene, with artists like Jeff Koons, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Matthew Barney, Tom Sachs, Doug Aitken, Olafur Eliasson, and Cai Guo-Qiang. The museum gives 6-7 temporary exhibitions each year. Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art collaborates with international institutions and produces exhibitions that travel worldwide. In 2012 the museum moved to two new buildings designed by Renzo Piano in Tjuvholmen.
Heiner Friedrich is an art dealer and collector of minimal art and conceptual art. Friedrich and his then wife Philippa de Menil, together with Helen Winkler, established the Dia Art Foundation in 1973. Friedrich has exhibited works by Blinky Palermo, Walter De Maria, Donald Judd, La Monte Young, Andy Warhol, Michael Heizer, and Joseph Beuys, among others in his galleries in Germany, but became less interested in short term gallery installations and through Dia began to collect, and support major projects, such as Walter De Maria's The Lightning Field (1977) in New Mexico and purchasing a former military base in Marfa, Texas to enable Donald Judd to create a permanent space for the installation of his large minimal sculptures.
Dominique Astrid Lévy is a Swiss art dealer, and co-founder and partner, with Brett Gorvy, of Lévy Gorvy, a gallery with offices in New York City, London, Switzerland, Hong Kong and Paris.
Lucio Amelio was an Italian art dealer, curator, and actor. For decades he contributed to make Naples an international art centre encouraging the dialogue between European and American contemporary arts.
Galerie Karsten Greve is a set of European art galleries established by Karsten Greve that operates art exhibit spaces in Cologne (Germany), St. Moritz (Switzerland), and Paris (France). It specializes in postwar and contemporary art, representing around fifty artists. The gallery's programme is characterized by the international postwar avant-garde, but also includes photographers and Chinese contemporary artists, as well as other international young artists. The gallery publishes catalogue editions to accompany exhibitions as well as monographs and catalogues raisonneés.
Jill Lloyd is a writer and curator specializing in twentieth-century art, with particular expertise for German and Austrian art. She has organised many critically acclaimed exhibitions for leading museums and has published widely, including her book German Expressionism, Primitivism and Modernity, which was awarded the first National Art Book Prize.
Hubert Looser is a former Swiss businessman, philanthropist and art collector. Looser was President of Walter Rentsch Holding AG and ELCO Looser Holding AG. Today Looser is active as a member of the board of the Hubert Looser Foundation.
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