Switzerland Guide
Luzern
Sammlung Rosengart
The outstanding Sammlung Rosengart (Rosengart Collection) is a collection of more than 200 key twentieth-century works, built up over forty years by art dealers Siegfried Rosengart and his daughter Angela – the latter born in Luzern in 1932 and still a resident.
The ground floor is devoted to a magnificent overview of Picasso's art, from early paintings – including a statuesque Portrait Alice Derain dated 1905, when Picasso was 24 – through to works full of light and space painted in Cannes in the mid-1950s, and five exuberant canvases dated 1967–69, a few years before the artist's death.
The basement holds one of the broadest collections of works by Paul Klee in private hands, a seamless chronological record showing the development of Klee's fluent and compelling fantasy world. In the first room – ahead at the bottom of the stairs – Klee's visit to Tunisia is reflected in a number of colourful North African landscapes and the many works with Arab and Jewish elements. His expressive imagination takes hold in the second room, which includes the unsettling Ironic Fairytale (#69), featuring two jesters on the edge of a nebulous wood beneath a furious moon. One of the most characteristic (and memorable) sketches is Little X (#117), in the third room – a dozen simple brushstrokes that create a universe of childhood experience, lost in a bigger, more serious adult world.
The upper floor features a creatively assembled array of Impressionist and Modernist works, amongst them a room of Chagalls – including Night at the Window (1950), a distinctive scene of blissful lovers looking out over a sleeping town – two fine Monets, and works by Renoir, Modigliani, Kandinsky, Matisse and others.
Opening time: Daily: April– Oct 10am–6pm, Nov– March 11am–5pm
Price: Fr.15
Website: www.rosengart.ch