Isabelle Bscher, proprietor of New York and Zurich-based Galerie Gmurzynska, was planning for her new show at her East 78th Street NYC gallery, which included works by Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Yves Klein, Dan Basen and Tom Wesselmann, when we spoke for this article. She had just come back from her time in Aspen, where the gallery exhibited at the debut of the Aspen Art Fair featuring a special presentation by six -time Olympian Prince Hubertus of Hohenlohe-Langenburg alongside works by Robert Indiana, Marjorie Strider, Joan Miró and a Pablo Picasso with a $3.5 million price tag. She also exhibits in Los Angeles, where she curated an exhibition of painter Anh Duong at Spring Place. She was tapped as a curator for the LA and New York locations of the private membership club, both of which are designed by Kulapat Yantrasast of WHY Architecture, renowned for his work on major art spaces, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Bscher jokes 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,” she says. “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 first 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,” Bscher says. 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 catalogues in his collages, and who once designed their booth at Art Basel Miami. Galerie Gmurzynska represents the estates of prominent artists including Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Nevelson and Spanish surrealist Joan Miró, with whose family Bscher works closely.
Great-Grandfather Saved Oppenheim Bank
Other family members have also occupied distinguished positions in various fields. Her godfather was Baron von Thyssen, the Swiss industrialist who amassed one of the world’s greatest private art collections – widely considered better than that of the British royal family. Bscher’s father, Dr. Thomas Bscher, a banker, is a racecar driving enthusiast who won a world championship with McLaren at the GTR Euroseries in 1998. He later became CEO of Bugatti, the exotic carmaker. The gallerist’s Great-grandfather, Robert Pferdmenges was a prominent German banker, a Protestant, who aided Jews during the Nazi era and became influential in post-war politics.
Bscher’s father came from a very old German family that had started out as cotton merchants. Her great-grandfather was a well-known person. 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.
Pferdmenges then became influential in German politics, helping Konrad Adenauer, a close associate, to become the country’s first post-war chancellor. The Marshall plan for the reconstruction of Germany was designed at Pferdmenges’ house, and he cofounded the Christian Democratic Union, which was the party of Angela Merkel. He is often given credit for Germany’s post-war economic miracle.
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. Previously, 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 notes. Galerie Gmurzynska began representing the actor’s paintings after he purchased some art there while in Zurich about twelve years ago. “He came in, he was very nice, and he started telling us about his work, and we looked at his work and were really impressed,” she said.
Forming Alliances with Creative Geniuses
At various art fairs Bscher has collaborated with renowned creatives like Baz Luhrmann and the late Germano Celant, artistic director of the Prada Foundation who passed away from Covid in 2020, on designing her gallery’s booths. “We’re very well known for working with creative geniuses who might be from other backgrounds, like Zaha Hadid,” Bscher says. In fact, the gallery’s Paradeplatz location in Zurich houses the late architect’s very last interiors project, a design for an exhibition celebrating Dada master Kurt Schwitters, in 2016. Bscher brought film director Baz Lurhmann in to create a classroom-like set for an Art Basel Miami show with the theme “My kid could have done that. You know how when people see a great artwork and they say, my kid could have done that? We took great masters, like Kandinsky and Twombly, and we showed why your kid couldn’t have done that.”
Lagerfeld’s Wit, Zaha Hadid’s Expertise, Von Thyssen’s Extravagance
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,’” Bscher said. She describes the late Chanel designer’s house in Paris as incredible; he did all the interiors himself and had impeccable taste.
He was an expert in many areas, like poetry and literature, constantly reading. “He was absolutely the most sophisticated person I’ve ever met.” Zaha Hadid was an expert on the Russian avantgarde, 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. She came up with a black-and-white theme, with Hadid’s work in the black section and the Russian avant-garde pieces in the white. “We started working with her closely after that, and then she designed the architecture of the gallery,” says Bscher. “She was a phenomenal person.” Bscher’s godfather, Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen, known as Heini, had one of the world’s most important art collections, full of priceless Old Masters, impressionists and expressionists, with everything from El Greco to Picasso to Van Gogh.
Address: 39 East 78th Street, New York, NY
Phone: 212-535-5275
Website: gmurzynska.com
