Rosengart Collection Lucerne

<body leftmargin="0" marginwidth="0" topmargin="0" marginheight="0"> <font color="#990033"></font> <div align="left"> <font color="#990033"><br> The Foundation<br> <br> The Rosengart Foundation<br> The Rosengart Foundation was established by Angela Rosengart in 1992. The object of the Foundation is to maintain the art collection donated to it by Angela Rosengart and make it available to the public by placing it on permanent display in Lucerne. The Foundation currently has a seven-member Board of Trustees, of which Angela Rosengart is President. <br> <br> Angela Rosengart<br> An art dealer by profession, Angela Rosengart was born in Lucerne in 1932 and still resides in the city of her birth. She has been active in the art dealing world since 1948: initially as an employee in her father Siegfrieds business, then as co-owner and joint managing director together with her father from 1957 onwards. Her father died in 1985, since when she has managed the business alone. <br> <br> In 1978, Siegfried and Angela Rosengart donated eight works by Picasso  seven paintings and a sculpture  to the City of Lucerne to mark the 800th anniversary of the citys foundation. The Rosengart Donation, as the gift became known, has been added to several times since then, and is now on display in the Picasso Museum on the citys Furrengasse. In addition to the works themselves, the museum features over 200 photographs of Picasso by David Douglas Duncan. <br> <br> Angela Rosengart is a highly-educated woman with a broad range of interests in the arts. While her mother tongue is German, she speaks French and English with almost equal fluency and skill. Her favourite authors include William Shakespeare, whom she prefers to read in the 16th-Century original. <br> <br> Angela Rosengart has a passion for theatre, loves music, and has always made (and continues to make) extensive travels to the worlds cultural sites. <br> <br> In her professional career, she has concentrated on the Classic Modernists. Indeed, she was a personal friend of a number of these artists, first and foremost with Pablo Picasso. Picasso, for his part, painted Angelas portrait no fewer than five times. <br> <br> Despite establishing the Rosengart Foundation, Angela Rosengart remains an active figure on the world art dealing scene. She still attends all the major art auctions in London and New York in person, and continues to put her vast knowledge and invaluable advice at the disposal of her large circle of private clients around the world. <br> <br> <br> All rights reserved.<br> All unauthorised reproduction or any other use prohibited except private individual use.<br> <br> <br> <br> The Collection<br> <br> The Rosengart Collection<br> The Rosengart Collection was originally the private art collection of father-and-daughter Siegfried and Angela Rosengart. The collection has never previously been made available to the public in its entirety, though individual works have been regularly lent to major exhibitions. <br> <br> The Collection comprises well over 200 works by 23 different Classic Modernist artists. These include over 100 works by Paul Klee and some 50 by Pablo Picasso. Other artists represented include (in alphabetical order) Bonnard, Braque, Cézanne, Chagall, Dufy, Kandinsky, Laurens, Léger, Marini, Matisse, Miró, Modigliani, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Rouault, Seurat, Signac, Soutine, Utrillo and Vuillard. <br> <br> <br> <br> The museum<br> <br> The architectural concept<br> The Empire-style neo-classical building, which was built in 1924 to plans draw up by Zurich city architect Hermann Herter, is of striking interest and merit in its own right. The richly-ornamented yet strictly-proportioned edifice and its impressive interior  formerly the home of the Swiss National Bank  combine to form a deeply impressive whole. And, standing alone, the building exudes an impressive independence in a far-from-ideal architectural environment. <br> <br> Transforming the building into an art museum is proving relatively straightforward: the combination of the interiors innate strength and spacious dimensions offer the exhibits a highly attractive blend of solidity and space, together with a generous viewing perspective. <br> <br> <br> The display of the Rosengart Collection in the former Swiss National Bank building is concentrated on the ground floor, the first floor and the first-level basement floor. These are the rooms formerly occupied by the banks Central Switzerland office. In contrast to the buildings previous guise, however, all these rooms will be open to visitors. <br> <br> The ground floor remains largely unchanged in terms of its interior arrangement. The entire floor will be dedicated to works by Pablo Picasso, which will be arranged to permit a chronological walking tour. <br> <br> Access to further exhibition floors will be via the impressive staircase which formerly linked the Swiss National Banks publicly-accessible rooms. <br> <br> The first floor will feature a number of exhibition rooms each dedicated to particular artists, all leading off a central lobby area. As on the ground floor, these rooms are arranged in a fan shape around the main hall; but, unlike the ground-floor arrangement, the content of these rooms will not be organised in any kind of continuous order. <br> <br> The centrally-located former conference room will be retained in its original condition. The room will be open for visitors to sit and rest a while, offering an attractive alternative to the usual museum café arrangements. <br> <br> The first-level basement will be home to the large collection of works by Paul Klee. Here the buildings existing structure, with its extensive vaults, has been skilfully adapted to create a system of different but interlinked rooms. In contrast to the rational organisation of the exhibits on the ground floor and first floor, the arrangement here will be almost labyrinthine. The rooms are lower, too, and are illuminated solely with artificial light  the best arrangement for preserving Klees paper works.<br> <br> State-of-the-art technology will be applied to ensure optimum operation of the various exhibition rooms. And, while the museum is being established in an existing building, excellent conditions are being established to ensure that all the works are presented as effectively as possible and in a manner which ensures their conservation in optimum physical condition.<br> <br> </font></div> </body>