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Indepth Arts News:
"The House for Cubism: The Raoul La Roche Collection"
1999-07-17 until 1999-11-29
Museum of Fine Arts, Basel
Basel, ,
CH Switzerland
Raoul La Roche belongs to the most important patrons of
the Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel (The Public Art
Collection of Basel). Thanks to his endowments, an
important selection of Cubist art of great international
significance was added to the holdings of the Kunstmuseum
(Museum of Fine Arts) between 1952 and 1963. The
Museum now has the pleasure of devoting a major exhibition
to the collector Raoul La Roche, to his incomparable
collection and to his residence, built in Paris by Le
Corbusier. The exhibition is part of a project launched by the
Schweizerische Kunstverein (Swiss Art Association) to
highlight ten important private collections in Swiss museums
on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Swiss
Confederation. The series of exhibitions has been organised
in response to the extraordinary interest shown at the end of
our century in the evolution of the great collections: in their
characteristics, their history and meaning, and in the
motives of their creators.
Raoul La Roche, born in Basel in 1889, went to Paris as a
young banker in 1911. There he cultivated close contact with
his compatriots, including the architect from La
Chaux-de-Fonds, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier),
whom he met in 1918. Through him and his friend, the
painter Amédée Ozenfant, La Roche was introduced to the
contemporary art scene in Paris. A turning point for La
Roche was the joint exhibition of the two friends in
December 1918 in Paris, and the publication they issued
that same year, Après le cubisme (After Cubism). The latter
expounded the theoretical principles underlying their Purist
painting, which had initially attracted the budding collector’s
attention.
In 1914 the collection of the influential German collector
Wilhelm Uhde and the holdings of the Daniel-Henry
Kahnweiler Gallery were confiscated in Paris as enemy
property. The works of art were subsequently sold off in a
series of auctions between 1921 and 1923 for purposes of
reparation. Substantial groups of works by Cubists Picasso,
Braque, Gris and Léger, which La Roche acquired on those
occasions, laid the foundations for what probably became
the world’s largest private collection of Cubist art. Up until
1928, La Roche purchased additional works through Léonce
Rosenberg at the Galerie de l'Effort Moderne, rounding out
his collection with paintings by Braque, Léger, Gris, Le
Corbusier and Ozenfant, and sculptures by Jacques
Lipchitz.
Raoul La Roche paid close attention to the discussions
among the artists around Le Corbusier, read their
publications and supported the endeavours of the now
world-famous architect-urbanist. Between 1920 and 1925,
his financial support was instrumental in the publication of
Esprit nouveau, edited by Le Corbusier and Ozenfant, an
internationally influential journal that propagated the
synthesis of art, architecture and industry.
Raoul La Roche, an extremely modest, discreet and
industrious person, did a great deal for his compatriots
through his generous patronage of charitable Swiss
institutions in Paris. In consequence of his selflessness,
little is known about the life and person of this great
collector. During World War II, he was compelled to take up
temporary residence in Lyon while his collection remained
behind in occupied Paris. In 1962 he returned to Basel,
where he had always maintained close contact with his
family. That same year the University of Basel awarded him
the honorary degree of doctor. Raoul La Roche died in Basel
in June 1965.
The Collection
Raoul La Roche was 29 years old when he began collecting
in 1918. Ten years later he owned some 160 works. So
clear was the concept that defined his collection that he no
longer added to it when other styles and movements began
to hold sway. He stopped collecting in 1928, at which point
the following artists were represented in his holdings:
Pablo Picasso, 12 works (11 paintings and 1 papier collé)
Georges Braque, 50 works (26 paintings, 15 papiers collés,
9 drawings)
Fernand Léger, 21 paintings
Juan Gris, 26 paintings
Le Corbusier, 14 works (11 paintings, 2 drawing, 1 album of
drawings and watercolours)
Amédée Ozenfant, 27 works (25 paintings, 1 drawing, 1
portfolio of 20 watercolours)
Jacques Lipchitz, 4 sculptures
Walter Bodmer, 1 relief
André Bauchant, 2 paintings.
The Residence
In 1923, wanting to give his collection a suitable context, La
Roche commissioned his friend Le Corbusier to build a
residence in Auteuil in the west of Paris. Today it is
considered one of the founding icons of Modern
Architecture. Among its most salient features are the large
vestibule with its several views as it extends through the
house from top to bottom; the interior colour scheme; and
the gallery space, set at right angles to the body of the
building, for which Le Corbusier’s first made use of stilts
(pilotis) to raise a structure off the ground. In designing the
villa for La Roche, Le Corbusier spoke for the first time of a
promenade architecturale, which was to become a key
concept of his œuvre.
The La Roche Villa immediately attracted widespread
attention upon its completion; it was soon visited by such
people as architect Adolf Loos, artist Fernand Léger,
architectural historian Sigfried Giedion, and all those
interested in the New Architecture. In fact, the house drew
so many visitors that Raoul La Roche officially opened it to
the public for two days a week. When he returned to Basel
in 1962, he gave the villa to the Fondation Le Corbusier; it
now houses the architect’s papers and archives, which are
accessible for research.
The Endowment
La Roche donated almost half of his collection to the
museum in three stages. The first two endowments were
made in 1953 and 1956, the third in 1963 following his return
to Basel. Having bestowed upon his native city one of the
most outstanding collections of Cubism in the world, Raoul
La Roche invested the museum with great international
importance in the field of classical Modern Art.
The endowment consists of 3 paintings by Picasso, 19
works by Braque (8 paintings, 7 drawings, 4 papiers collés),
17 paintings by Léger, 12 paintings by Gris, 4 sculptures by
Lipchitz, 7 paintings by Le Corbusier, 7 paintings and 1
portfolio of 20 watercolours by Ozenfant, and 1 painting by
Bauchant. In 1955 Georg Schmidt, the then director of the
Öffentliche Kunstsammlung Basel, exchanged one painting
each by Picasso and Braque for Picasso’s Les Demoiselles
des bords de la Seine, d’après Courbet, 1950.
Not all of the works in the collection found a home in Basel;
La Roche gave some to other museums: the Musée national
d’art moderne in Paris, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon,
and the Kunsthaus in Zurich. Still others were bequeathed to
family and friends or sold for other reasons. However, he
gave the body of the collection to his native city to make it
permanently accessible to public view.
Exhibition Concept
The exhibition demonstrates the extraordinary achievements
of a single-minded and noble-hearted collector. It shows a
reconstruction of the collection in terms of its highlights in
conjunction with a presentation of the La Roche villa with its
unusual gallery space. The works donated to the museum
by La Roche are supplemented with some 20 to 25 works
on loan from international museums and private collections.
The villa is represented through the famous series of
photographs taken by Fred Boissonnas in 1926, as well as
models, sketches, and documents on the colour scheme of
the interior.
Catalogue
A wide-ranging, richly illustrated catalogue contains essays
by international specialists on the artists and their works, on
the La Roche villa, and on the history of the collection and
the endowment. Writers will include Picasso specialist
Pierre Daix on the Ventes Kahnweiler, Franz Meyer on
Picasso, Mark Roskill on Braque, Eric Michaud on Léger,
Kurt W. Forster on Gris, Stanislaus von Moos on the
architect and artist Le Corbusier, Tim Benton on the La
Roche villa, Malcolm Gee on avant-garde collections in Paris
in the twenties, Françoise Ducros on the journal L’Esprit
nouveau, and Didier Schulmann on the endowment at the
Musée national d'art moderne in Paris.
Ancillary Events
A number of events will be organised to further elucidate the
interplay between collector and architect and between
painting and architecture. They will explore the panorama of
artistic activities undertaken by Cubism, Purism and Esprit
Nouveau, as reflected in painting, architecture, music and
literature.
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