Moderne Galerie

The Moderne Galerie, founded by art dealer Gottfried Tanner (1880–1958) in Zurich, was one of the first galleries in Switzerland to specialize in nineteenth- and twentieth-century French and Swiss art by, for example, Cuno Amiet, Hans Arp, Ferdinand Hodler, and Oskar Lüthy. In the years just before and after the onset of World War I, the gallery became a pivotal player in promoting European modernism in the alpine country.

Before establishing his own gallery, Tanner worked for Johann Erwin Wolfensberger at Zurich’s Kunstsalon Wolfsberg, which was founded in October 1911 as one of the earliest privately run art salons in Switzerland. Between 1911 and 1913, this new type of art enterprise cropped up in the Swiss art market; Tanner’s Moderne Galerie emerged within this milieu.

The Moderne Galerie’s inaugural exhibition of Gustave Courbet opened on April 5, 1913. The local press praised the presentation, recognizing that it offered the first-ever opportunity to see the artist’s work in Switzerland and welcoming the Moderne Galerie to the local art scene. Located at the Huguenin House at Bahnhofstrasse 39, the gallery subsequently featured the work of such artists as Arp, Paul Cézanne, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Eugène Delacroix, Hodler, Lüthy, Camille Pissarro, Auguste Renoir, Giovanni Segantini, and Emile Vallet.

Tanner’s acquaintance with the Paris-based Swiss painter Carl Montag, whose work he also frequently presented at his gallery, afforded him direct access to French art works. Montag saw in Tanner a useful collaborator in his quest to circulate the latest art coming from France and acted as Tanner’s broker in Paris beginning in 1913. Tanner also served as an agent for the long-established Parisian dealers Bernheim-Jeune, Durand-Ruel, and Georges Petit, who had successfully promoted contemporary Parisian art in Central Europe since the late nineteenth century.

Tanner also joined forces with the German-born, Paris-based art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler to present and sell Cubist artworks in Switzerland before the war. In April 1914, the Moderne Galerie hosted a version of the first comprehensive exhibition of Pablo Picasso, which began at Heinrich Thannhauser’s Moderne Galerie in Munich. In May 1914 Tanner presented the first Swiss solo exhibition of André Derain.

By spring 1916, with a growing number of clients and with a secure financial market in Switzerland that attracted investors, Tanner and the Moderne Galerie had begun to represent the French Galerie Bernheim-Jeune & Cie, which had established a branch in Lausanne in 1913. In June 1919, less than a year after the end of World War I, Bernheim-Jeune also opened an independent space a few houses down from the Moderne Galerie at Bahnhofstrasse 42; Tanner became its director while still helming the Galerie Tanner, as the Moderne Galerie became known after the war. The galleries maintained different areas of focus, with Galerie Tanner showing primarily Swiss art, and Bernheim-Jeune largely representing French artists. While the Moderne Galerie stopped operating under this name in around 1919, Tanner’s post-World War I Galerie Tanner remained open until 1953.