Galleries
Returning to Its Swiss Roots, Hauser & Wirth Is Opening Its Ninth Gallery in St. Moritz
A Louise Bourgeois show will inaugurate the space in December.
A Louise Bourgeois show will inaugurate the space in December.
Eileen Kinsella ShareShare This Article
Hauser & Wirth is adding yet another gallery to its international empire. The Swiss dealers are returning to their roots with a new space in St. Moritz, set to open in December with a show of work by Louise Bourgeois. It will be Hauser & Wirth’s third gallery in Switzerland, and its ninth outpost internationally.
For gallery president Iwan Wirth, the St. Moritz space “represents a return to my earliest steps into the art world and speaks to our DNA as a Swiss gallery. I organized my first show in St. Moritz in 1987 at age 17, an exhibition that included works by Daniel Spoerri, Le Corbusier, and Marc Chagall, and took place at the Hotel Carlton,” he said in a statement. “The rich cultural history of the Engadin Valley is distinctive, colored by many of the artistic figures that inspire our work today.”
The new space will be housed in the Palace Galerie in the city center, spanning three floors and a total of 4,400 square feet. Architect Luis Laplace, who also designed the gallery’s 18th-century farm venue in Somerset, is overseeing the interior modeling.
Over the course of two centuries, a number of writers, philosophers, and artists have been drawn to the Upper Engadine region, from philosopher Friedrich Nietzche and writer Thomas Mann to artists including Gerhard Richter, Julian Schnabel, and Joseph Beuys. The region was once home to the Giacometti family The influential art dealer Bruno Bischofberger was the first to establish a gallery in St. Moritz in 1963.
The first Hauser & Wirth gallery was established in Zurich in 1992. In 2015, the gallery opened a second Swiss location, a private gallery in the Le Vieux Chalet, a ski chalet in Gstaad.
In St. Moritz, the gallery will present an annual program of exhibitions focused on contemporary art and “20th-century masters it represents,” as well as accompanying events and educational activities. Hauser & Wirth will be appointing a director of the St. Moritz gallery in the coming months.