Isabelle Bscher was born into this world of art; it is her destiny. She is the third generation to run Galerie Gmurzynska, founded by her grandmother, Antonina Gmurzynska, in Cologne, Germany. Bscher’s mother, Krystyna Gmurzynska, took over the gallery in 1985, relocated the flagship to Switzerland in 2005, and mother and daughter now work together.
Art world dynasty
Bscher grew up in the gallery – a red cube designed by Swiss architect Roger Diener, connected to the family’s house in Cologne – surrounded by priceless artworks and glittering art-world personalities. She joked that she learned to walk at Art Basel, accompanying her mother to the fair since infancy. “The gallery and my life have been so deeply intertwined, it’s hard to separate one and the other,” Bscher said. “I felt from a very early point that I was part of it; I always knew I wanted to be a gallerist.”
Working full-time at the gallery by age 22, Bscher remembers how excited she was to work with artists. “One of the fi rst exhibits I was able to co-organize was with Hedi Slimane, who in addition to being a phenomenal fashion designer is also a great photographer,” she said. After relocating the gallery to Zurich, another early career thrill for Bscher was working on the Alexander Calder show that launched the new space. “I remember specific shows that meant a lot.”
Now with four locations, two in Zurich, one in the affluent Swiss enclave of Zug, and another in New York City, they represent major modern artists like Picasso, Kandinsky, James Turrell, Robert Indiana and Yves Klein, as well as Karl Lagerfeld’s photography, Sylvester Stallone’s paintings and architects Zaha Hadid and Richard Meier, who has used the gallery’s catalogs in his collages, and who once designed their booth at Art Basel Miami. Galerie Gmurzynska represents the estates of prominent artists including Wilfredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Nevelson and Spanish surrealist Joan Miró, with whose family Bscher works closely.
Sought-After Guest Curator
An art historian who studied contemporary art in London and New York and earned a master’s degree from Sotheby’s, Bscher is in demand to curate shows at museums around the world.
She co-curated a Miró exhibit at Villa Paloma, the New National Museum of Monaco, under the guidance of Prince Albert. It included early works and lesser-known later pieces, some of which had never been shown before, as well as some that are a part of pop culture, like the painting behind Gordon Gekko’s desk in the movie “Wall Street.” “It was a great show. It actually drew the most visitors ever to the museum in Monaco, and it was at the height of Covid,” Bscher said.
Bscher organized a retrospective of Sylvester Stallone’s 55-year painting career for the Osthaus Museum in Hagen, Germany. “It’s a beautiful museum; it’s going to be a big show called ‘Painting for 55 Years.’ He’s been making paintings since the mid-1960s, and I think people have a certain perception of him, but he is very sophisticated, with a great use of color and form in his work.” Stallone is also a lot of fun, Bscher noted.
Colorful Characters
Living among such colorful characters, Bscher certainly has stories to tell. She calls Karl Lagerfeld “the king of the one-liner.” “Everything he said was incredibly funny. He’d ask me about somebody, and I’d say, ‘They have a lot of tattoos,’ and he would say, ‘Having a tattoo is like spending your whole life in a Pucci dress.’”
Zaha Hadid was an expert on the Russian avant-garde, on which she wrote her thesis. This was an area in which Galerie Gmurzynska was a pioneer early on, and which helped make its name in the art world. They brought Hadid in to curate a show of her own work along with pieces from Bscher’s mother’s collection.
Bscher also had a close relationship with Christo, with whom she collaborated on exhibits at various art fairs, like TEFAF and Art Expo Chicago. They met after the artist’s wife and partner, Jeanne Claude, had passed away, and prior to his 2016 Floating Piers project in Italy. “We did a show of his finished and unfinished projects in St. Moritz, and I became quite friendly with him,” Bscher said. “Christo was the greatest.”
Great Grandfather Saved Oppenheim Bank
Bscher’s father came from a very old German family that had started as cotton merchants. Her great-grandfather Robert Pferdmenges was a wellknown banker, head of the banker’s union in Germany, and prominent in the Protestant church. He joined Oppenheim Bank, then the largest private bank in Europe, as a partner around 1930. Under Nazi law, Oppenheim’s Jewish owners were forced to step aside, and the bank was “Aryanized,” its name changed to “Robert Pferdmenges & Co.”
After the war, he returned control of the bank to the Oppenheim family. It was one of only two businesses seized from Jews that were given back to the original owners after the war. Oppenheim continued in business until 2010 when it was acquired by Deutsche Bank in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
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