Curt Leopold Burgauer (or Kurt)

A prominent Swiss collector and patron of the arts as well as a third-generation Jewish textile merchant, Curt Burgauer was active within the intellectual milieu of post-World War II Zurich. His diverse collection included a range of Cubist and Surrealist artworks, examples of international geometric abstraction, works by emerging Swiss artists, contributions from post-1945 movements such as Nouvelle Réalisme and Pop Art, and also non-Western art objects.

Burgauer’s first encounter with the avant-garde dates to the late 1920s, when he studied in Frankfurt am Main and later in Berlin to prepare for his entry into the family’s firm, the embroidery manufacturing business Burgauer & Co in St. Gallen. It was in Berlin in 1928 that Burgauer, at the age of twenty, first saw the work of Vassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, whose paintings and drawings were on view at the Galerie Alfred Flechtheim. Around this time, Burgauer also started to acquire prints and literature about modern art, including Kandinsky’s seminal treatise Über das Geistige in der Kunst (Concerning the Spiritual in Art) of 1911, and issues of Flechtheim’s art journal Der Querschnitt and the French art journal Cahiers d’art.

After returning to Switzerland in 1930, Burgauer began to work in the family’s trade but also increasingly devoted more time to building an art collection that would grow extensively over the course of the following decades. He moved to Zurich in the 1930s in response to the growing anti-Semitism and alarming changes he sensed in St. Gallen: a result of Nazi propaganda spilling over from neighboring Germany. Aside from Burgauer’s drive to remain in constant dialogue with the newest art, the liberal atmosphere toward new creative trends in Zurich also helped to shape the breadth of his collection.

To purchase new works, Burgauer—along with his wife, Erna Burgauer (née Guggenheim)—primarily frequented local dealers such as Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Galerie H. U. Gasser, Galerie Gustave und Léon Bollag (later Galerie Suzanne Bollag), and Galerie Palette in Zurich, but also foreign dealers as well as artist studios. By 1970 the collection included more than 340 artworks, among them Klee’s painting Fool of the Depths (1927; private collection, Switzerland; Helfenstein and Rümelin 2001, no. 4222), acquired years after Burgauer encountered it at Flechtheim’s gallery in Berlin during his apprenticeship there in 1928. Among the Cubist works by Pablo Picasso in the Burgauer collection were the artist’s collage Head of a Man (1913; Kunsthaus Zürich) and one of six painted bronzes from the artist’s groundbreaking Glass of Absinthe series (1914; The Museum of Modern Art, New York). Head of a Man, which the couple purchased in 1939, once belonged in the stock of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler’s pre-World War I Parisian gallery and is considered the Burgauers’ earliest acquisition; the sculpture was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1956 after Burgauer sold it following its presentation in the 1950 exhibition Ausstellung europäische Kunst 13.—20. Jahrhundert aus Zürcher Sammlungen (Exhibition of European Art from the 13th to 20th Centuries in Zurich Collections). Other Cubist examples in the Burgauers’ former collection were Juan Gris’s still life Fruit Dish and Glass (1916; location unknown; Cooper with Potter 1977, no. 191) and a “contrast of forms” watercolor by Fernand Léger titled Figure (1917; Sotheby’s New York, 17 May 2017, lot 137). Burgauer likely acquired the latter from Zurich’s Galerie Boesinger und Indermauer (H. U. Gasser) by around 1949.

As an art patron, Burgauer advocated for emerging artists by collecting their work, serving on exhibition committees, and participating as a member of cultural circles such as the Zurich “Club Bel Etage” and “Viadukt.” Active in the art scene and generous in terms of lending to exhibitions, Burgauer and his wife relocated to Küsnacht in 1964 and by the mid-1980s decided to donate and bequeath groups of works to the Kunstmuseum Winterthur, the Kunsthaus Zürich, and Kunstmuseum St. Gallen. Indeed, it was only in conjunction with these donations and bequests that different parts of their collection made their public debut in 1984, 1985, and 1986 respectively. In 1994, the couple founded the Erna-und-Curt-Burgauer-Stiftung, which is still dedicated to supporting young artists and musicians today. In the late 1990s, Christie’s organized several public auctions, including works from the Burgauers’ collection, to benefit the foundation.