An important part of the collection of drawings of Jan and Marie-Anne Krugier has been held from February 26th until May 14th 2000 at the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum in Madrid. 200 drawings among the 400 collected by Jan Krugier, a Geneva art dealer, and his wife, born Princess Poniatowska, are being shown in this major exhibition.
Jan Krugier, one of the most important Swiss art dealers, said that artists were not cheating while producing drawings. He started his collection with his wife, who works as an artist, some 30 years ago after opening his first gallery in Geneva.
Born in 1928 to a Jewish family in Poland, Jan Krugier was arrested in 1941 by the Nazis and detained in the concentration camp of Auschwitz where his father, mother and brother perished. In order to survive he lied about his real age and worked in harsh conditions in the camp until its liberation by British troops in 1945.
Jan Krugier was then sheltered by a Swiss family and encouraged to study art in Zurich. After being freed from Auschwitz he was already an adult who had had no youth. He studied with Johannes Uten at the school of Fine Arts of Zurich and then met Alberto Giacometti before deciding to become an art dealer.
“I arrived in Paris in 1950 and studied painting with André Lhote before I decided to open a small school to earn a living. I stood awake during many nights with Giacometti who encouraged me to become a dealer. We never referred to money, even with his agent Pierre Loeb, and in 1962 I opened my first gallery in Geneva after promising Alberto that I would not become like other dealers“, he told the daily Le Monde.
Krugier thus endeavoured to maintain a dialogue with the artists he promoted and those he chose were quite solitary men facing deep anguish. Above all Krugier was in search of authenticity.
Krugier and his wife started to collect drawings after their marriage in 1968. Their first purchase was a drawing by Georges Seurat, a classical landscape which was like homage to Poussin, one of his favourite artists. “At that time, there were not many people interested in the works of Seurat and his drawings were not worth much. We did not have enough money to buy such drawing, only $ 7,000 whereas the seller was asking $ 12,000 for it. We borrowed what was needed as in 1971 I had left my first gallery and was resuming my activities with little means,” he stated.
Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski recalled that her grand father collected drawings, notably a magnificent face of the Virgin by Parmigiano, the head of a woman wearing glasses by Nicolas Maes and a quite metaphorical landscape by Degas.
“My grand-father, Prince André Poniatowski, was a well-known horse rider. He had met Degas in the circles frequented by Pierre Louÿs, Mallarmé and Debussy and Degas had asked him to be his model. One day he visited Degas and saw him in the process of transforming into a landscape a nude with which he was not satisfied. He offered to acquire but Degas could not sell it as he was under contract with Durand-Ruel. One year later my grandfather discovered this pastel work in the Durand-Ruel gallery and finally bought it. It then passed to the Crocker family, our cousins, in San Francisco and then to my father who sold it to a Swiss collector before I bought it back,” she said.
During 30 years the couple gathered some 400 drawings from the Renaissance period up to nowadays. Marie-Anne is more enthusiastic about 16th Century drawings while Jan prefers 17th Century works, notably by Poussin or Claude Gellée. They also possess some extraordinary pieces by Ingres, including one representing the Gatteaux family, a collage mixing engraving and pencil drawing.
“I saw this work at Christie's at a time when I was ready to buy a drawing by Rubens. I could not buy both and the Ingres piece went to a Japanese who became quite panicky after discovering that that it was not fully a drawing. He then offered me to exchange it and I gladly accepted”, Jan Krugier recalled.
Such work is truly a museum piece and inevitably the Krugier couple has been competing against museums at auction. In many cases they have had the last word, notably when they bought a superb early Pontormo drawing after bidding against the Louvre and the Metropolitan museums in 1977 in Chaumont, Eastern France. Krugier bought for over $ 320,000 this drawing, a sketch representing the Virgin and Christ child surrounded by saints which was a preparatory work for a fresco destined to the Santissima Annunziata church in Florence.
“However we sometime yield against museums because we are conscious of their need to acquire fine pieces first. All the more, our collection will eventually end up in a museum,” he stressed.
After Berlin and Venice, the collection is now shown in Madrid. Jan Krugier notably exhibited drawings by Ingres and Picasso at the 1993 Fiac in Paris and particularly the Gatteaux family, which can be admired in this exhibition.
Most surprising for visitors is to discover that a dealer specialising in modern art can be so much interested in old master drawings. There are some modern works in the collection but they are somewhat outshone by those of 19th Century masters such as Ingres, Goya, Degas, Seurat and Cézanne and also by 16th Century masters, notably Pontormo, Veronese, Parmigiano or Primaticcio.
In this exhibition drawings by de Chirico or Picasso are shown alongside those of Beccafumi and Hugo van der Goes respectively. Drawings by Cézanne are facing those of Tintoretto or Rubens while Bandinelli or Ingres confronts hands drawn by Veronese with similar works.
Quite extraordinary is a kind of duel between the shadows seen in the works of Picasso or Rembrandt placed side by side whereas an interesting parallel has been made between Ingres, Degas, Picasso, Cézanne and Morandi. There also drawings of sculptures by Giacometti or Germaine Richier while small Iberian sculptures are shown next to a Cubist sketch by Picasso.
Jan Krugier and his wife have gathered a splendid collection as if they were engaged in a race against time bringing about convergences between artists from different periods.
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