About Us
Our collection is dedicated to the preservation, research, and re-evaluation of the rich heritage of 20th-century Swiss art, with a particular focus on the mid-century period — a time of profound cultural, social, and artistic transformation.
At the center of the collection are artists whose work has made a significant contribution to the visual and cultural identity of Switzerland, yet whose importance has only been partially recognized institutionally or contextualized within art history. The collection therefore understands itself not merely as an archive, but as an active contribution to expanding and refining the art-historical discourse surrounding Swiss modernism.
Until the mid-20th century, Europe's artistic hierarchy was largely concentrated in a few cultural centers, particularly Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. Artists from other regions, including Switzerland, were often perceived as peripheral, regardless of the quality and independence of their work.
In the postwar period, however, this structure began to change fundamentally. Artistic production became increasingly decentralized, and Swiss artists developed autonomous positions that were no longer defined exclusively in relation to traditional metropolitan centers, but instead emerged from Switzerland's specific cultural, landscape, and intellectual realities.
Despite this artistic autonomy, many of these positions remained outside international market and exhibition systems and were therefore only partially integrated into the global art-historical canon. Against this background, the collection aims not only to preserve these works, but to make their significance visible within the broader context of European modernism and to strengthen their art-historical relevance.
Particular attention is given to artistic positions that develop an independent visual language characterized by structural clarity, material sensitivity, and poetic reduction. The works reflect a wide range of approaches — from constructive and abstract tendencies to reduced landscape interpretations and experimental explorations of material and form.
Artists represented in the collection include Walter Burger, Hans Gschwind, Yvan Moscatelli, Jan Jedlicka, Max Truninger, Jean-Claude de Crouzaz, Arnold Zahner, Max Zwissler, Peter Ammon, Urs Börner, Hermann Jakl, Fritz Bitterli, Eugen Georg Zeller, Jakob Gelzer, Else Heusser-Van Arkel, and others.
While we began as a gallery, our focus has now shifted toward expanding and curating a private collection that reflects the diversity and depth of Switzerland's artistic heritage.
To explore our past exhibitions and the history of the gallery, visit lafraise.art/zurich.