Looser recounts with pride how he snapped up the painting, which was first reserved for the National Gallery of Art in Washington. He also describes a five-year quest to buy a Twombly sculpture. It involved tracking down an acquaintance of Twombly who received the sculpture as a gift and persuading him to sell it -- with the artist’s blessing.
Chipperfield Design
The Kunsthaus has commissioned the David Chipperfield to build a 200 million-Swiss franc ($213 million) extension for modern and contemporary art, including Looser’s permanent loan, a gift of impressionist works from the E.G. Buehrle Foundation and works donated by Bruno and Odette Giacometti.
The building, scheduled for completion in 2017, will be connected by an underground passage to the main museum across the road on Heimplatz. With an art garden for sculpture, it will make the Kunsthaus Switzerland’s biggest art museum.
Looser says he has stopped collecting art and has no plans to start again. He has tired of haggling with dealers.
“I can no longer identify with the way the art market runs today,” he says. “People see art as an investment. It has becomes a status symbol, and I’m not at home in this world.”
He isn’t worried about how he will occupy his days.
“I will now have time for myself and my wife,” Looser says. “I will go and look at the best art and best exhibitions in the world. I will travel, and I have endless supplies of unread books,” he says. “So my day is organized.”
“The Hubert Looser Collection” is showing at the Kunsthaus Zurich through Sept. 8. For more information, go to www.kunsthaus.ch/en/