Newsletter no. 3

Galerie von Vertes

Founded by Laszlo Vertes, the eponymous gallery was conceived as an international exhibition platform specialising in 20th- and 21st-century art. With a presence at international fairs and offices in Zurich and Freienbach, the gallery builds and manages private and public collections, organises exhibitions and gives lectures on art and art market related subjects.

“With Vertes I tried to create a democratic space for the exploration and understanding of the inexhaustible diversity of art and its creators.”

Laszlo Vertes opened his first gallery in Munich in 1981 and expanded to locations in St. Moritz and Salzburg before opening a Modern & Contemporary gallery in Zürich. The gallery annually participates in leading art fairs such as TEFAF Maastricht, Art Cologne, PAD London, Masterpiece and Art Miami. Vertes has also been involved as a lender in important exhibitions such as ‘The Steins Collect’ at the SFMOMA, Centre Pompidou and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It also supported ‘Matisse und die Fauves’ at the Albertina in Vienna, ‘Von Matisse zum Blauen Reiter’ at the Kunsthaus Zurich and ‘Horizont Jawlensky’ at the Museum Wiesbaden. Over twenty-five years, Laszlo Vertes accompanied Swiss businessman Gérard J. Corboud in putting together a high-quality and varied collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, Fauvist and German Expressionist pieces. It resulted in one of the most significant collections of Impressionist art in Europe. In March 2001, Gérard Corboud and his wife gave over 170 paintings from this collection to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum in Cologne as a permanent loan. Other collections looked after by Vertes include the Würth Collection in Germany, the Batliner Collection in Vienna (on permanent loan in the Albertina), the National Gallery in Washington and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Exceptional pieces by Albers, Calder, Chamberlain, Ernst, Francis, Jawlensky, Kusama, Lichtenstein, Picasso, Poliakoff, Richter, Soulages, Vasarely, Warhol and Wesselmann are featured throughout the year in our online exhibitions.

Despite its small size, this sculpture of a roaring lion’s head is endowed with the expressive power of a monumental work.

Lapis lazuli, the material in which this head is carved, was considered a precious stone in the Ancient Near East, and was used along with precious metals such as gold, electrum or silver for the production of luxurious artworks. Primarily mined in the high mountains of Afghanistan, lapis lazuli appeared in the form of beads as early as the 6th millennium BC in Mesopotamia, and later in Mehrgarh in the Indus Valley (Pakistan) and Tepe Hissar in Iran. Thanks to commercial exchanges, it spread throughout the entire Eastern world, particularly around the 3rd millennium BC, during the early Sumerian dynasties and in the royal tombs of Ur, as well as in Bactria, Egypt, Syria, Anatolia, and the Iranian world.

Workshops, which worked in the service of palaces or temples, produced luxury objects, including furniture, architectural and jewelry ornaments, either carved in the round or inlaid with lapis. This stone, reserved for the elites, was an attribute of princes and gods. Endowed with supernatural power, it symbolized political and religious authority and remained an exceptional and precious material in Ancient Near Eastern art.

Galerie de Bayser

Located on the first floor of a private mansion in the rue Sainte-Anne in Paris, the gallery has established itself as a reference for drawings both in France and on the international market.

The family structure, created in 1936, and developed by the parents Bruno and Thérèse de Bayser, is now managed by four brothers, Augustin, Louis, Matthieu and Patrick. Founding members of the Salon du Dessin, they have been participating for four years now in the development of Fine Arts Paris.

By exhibiting both drawings, paintings and sculptures, they try to create an intimate atmosphere on our stand that makes the visitor feel at home.