Ernst Beyeler. La passione per l'arte. Conversazioni con Christophe Mory

Since 1945 Ernst Beyeler has had a gallery in Basel, a gallery which has become one of the most important in Europe. Having always lived away from the major centres (Paris, New York, London), he has made his name all over the world for the quality of the work he presents and the exhibitions he has organised in his gallery. In 1997 he set up the Beyeler Foundation, an extraordinary building conceived by Renzo Piano, which brings together the masterpieces of his private collection, one of the most beautiful collections of twentieth century art, which is unique especially with regard abstract art (Kandinsky, Klee) and Cubism (Picasso). In these conversations with Christophe Mory, Beyeler reveals interesting behind-the-scenes information on the art world, such as the incredible meeting with the American collector G. David Thompson, or incidents involving artists such as Picasso and Giacometti: an extraordinary testimony of a passion for art and its key figures. Ernst Beyeler was born in 1921. In 1945 he bought an antique bookshop and transformed it into an art gallery. From that moment he has been involved in an uninterrupted series of exhibitions focused on the historical avant-garde. To date, the exhibitions number over 250. From 1971 to 1992, he was co-founder and co-organiser of "ART", the international art fair of Basel. In 1982 he set up the Beyeler Foundation and presented his collection at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid (1989), at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin (1993) and at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney (1996-1997). In 1994 he commissioned Renzo Piano to design the Beyeler Foundation building in Riehen (Basel), where his collection has been housed since 1997, a collection that then comprised about 150 masterpieces of modern art and works from Africa and Oceania, and has, in the meantime, grown thanks to the acquisition of important works. Christophe Mory (1962) has worked in communications, in particular at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Ex-producer of Radio France, he is the author of Le mystère Schubert (Le Publieur, 2002), La Passion de l'art. Entretiens avec Ernst Beyeler (Gallimard, 2003), Charles de Foucauld (Pygmalion, 2005) and a novel, La maladie des autres (Rocher, 2005). For the stage he has already published Paris, 1778 (2002) and Les Sauvages (2003) for Art & Comédie.