Beyeler Foundation

Geschichte

The Beyeler Foundation or Fondation Beyeler with its museum in Riehen, near Basel, owns and oversees the art collection of Hildy and Ernst Beyeler.HistoryArt dealers Ernst Beyeler and Hilda Kunz, known as Hildy, created the Beyeler Foundation in 1982 and commissioned Renzo Piano to design a museum to house their private collection. The collection was first publicly exhibited in its entirety at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid in 1989, and was subsequently shown at Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin in 1993 and the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney in 1997.By building Renzo Piano's museum structure in 1997, the Beyeler Foundation made its collection permanently accessible to the public. The museum is properly funded, and it receives annual grants from the cantons of Basel City and Basel County and the commune of Riehen. In 2006, approximately 340,000 persons visited the museum.Collection and exhibitionsThe Beyeler Foundation opened its doors on 18 October 1997, presenting 140 works of modern classics, including 23 Picassos. The overall collection of 200 works of classic modernism reflect the views of Hildy and Ernst Beyeler on 20th-century art and highlight features typical of the period from Claude Monet, Paul Cézanne and Vincent van Gogh to Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Francis Bacon. The paintings appear alongside some 25 objects of tribal art from Africa, Oceania and Alaska. A third of the exhibition space is reserved for special exhibitions staged to complement the permanent collection.