Special projects
Special projects
Exhibitions specially designed for Art Genève, presented by foundations, institutional collections, and private collections.
Each edition of Art Genève offers visitors a unique experience through its programme of exclusively non-commercial exhibitions.
Bridget Riley, Cranford Collection, London, 2023 © Richard Ivey
The Cranford Collection
Cranford Collection is a London-based contemporary art collection founded in 1999, when the city’s art scene was at its most vibrant. Among the artists at the core of the collection are Rosemarie Trockel, Bridget Riley, Rebecca Warren, Rachel Harrison, Sarah Lucas, Lynda Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, Alice Neel, Albert Oehlen, Christopher Wool, Sigmar Polke, Martin Kippenberger, Gerhard Richter and Carla Accardi.
Since 2005, the Collection has been presented in the form of temporary installations at a private house located at Gloucester Gate in Regent’s Park. Cranford Collection’s installations are open to the public by appointment. Recently the house at Gloucester Gate has been entirely renovated by architect David Chipperfield in order to increase its capacity as exhibition space and public venue. Cranford Collection has been the subject of two exhibitions : at Fundacion Santander in Madrid in 2013 and at MoCo in Montpellier in 2021.
CRASH : The installation gathers a powerful group of works as an echo of our tormented times. Albert Oehlen’s stormy landscape (Untitled, 1989) opens the room, where abstraction and figuration convey various states of dismantlement and dismemberment. Sarah Lucas’s exploded sofa (Fuck Destiny, 2000), Mattias Faldbakken’s crushed locker (Untitled, 2011), and Wade Guyton’s unfurled chair (Untitled, 2017) are brutal attacks on the banality of the everyday. Sergej Jensen’s wide spillage (Untitled, 2012) echoes Christopher Wool’s Rorschach-based silkscreen (Untitled, 2015), with its dripping limbs connecting to Bruce Nauman’s severed heads (Four Heads, 1989), Maria Lassnig’s headless body (Blasse Hockende, 1971), and Robert Gober’s disconnected arm (Untitled Series 2, 2012). These works remind us of art’s ancestral apotropaic function, invoking dark forces to keep them at bay. Infused with dark humor, their power also lies in our fascination with disaster: we simply can’t look away.
Curated by: Anne Pontegnie
Pieter van der Heyden Antwerp ca. 1525–1569 Antwerp | After Pieter Bruegel the Elder Breda (?) ca. 1525–1569 Brussels | Publisher Hieronymus Cock Antwerp ca. 1510–1570 Antwerp | Sloth, from “The Seven Deadly Sins” 1558, Engraving on paper
Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg, Berlin Surreale Welten – Mondes surréels – Surreal Worlds
The Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection traces common threads that weave through the evolution of the art of the fantastic, starting with works by Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Francisco de Goya, and culminating in the museum’s largest suite of works: the Surrealist art of such giants of twentieth-century works as Max Ernst and René Magritte. The collection was originally established by Otto Gerstenberg (1848-1935) and was largely lost during the World War II. It found new life in the collection of his grandson Dieter Scharf. Starting in the late 1960s, Scharf collected art imbued with the surrealistic spirit by Max Klinger, Édouard Manet, Salvador Dalí, Jean Dubuffet, Max Ernst, Paul Klee. These pieces, together with works by Francisco de Goya and Charles Méryon became the core of the collection as it exists today.
In 2001, this exquisite collection of Surrealist art was transformed into the Foundation Dieter Scharf in memory of Otto Gerstenberg under the leadership of Julietta Scharf. It was opened to the public in 2008 as part of a long-term loan to the Berlin State Museums. The collection is housed in the Neoclassical building across from Charlottenburg Palace, which was renovated for the museum by Sunder-Plassmann Architects in 2008. Over its sixteen years of existence, the museum has held numerous exhibitions. Notable highlights include shows curated by director Kyllikki Zacharias: Double Sexus: Hans Bellmer, Louise Bourgeois (2010), Surreal Objectivity (2016), Max Ernst, Sign thief (2018) and Symphony of Horror: 100 Years of Nosferatu (2022).
Julietta Scharf continues to expand the collection’s Surrealist focus, acquiring mysterious and mystical works by Unika Zürn, Fatoş İrwen, Alfred Kubin, and others. This show builds upon the exhibition Goya: Yo lo vi – Ich sah es – I saw it (2022), which explored the theme of war in Europe through some three dozen original prints that spoke to the madness and barbarity of war. Combined with large scale projections of Goya’s Caprichos and his Los Desastres de la Guerra, illuminating every detail. The current show focuses on the projection of Goya’s Caprichos, while the second room is dedicated to works from the Foundation Dieter Scharf, highlighting three key themes:
– The Beast in works by Francisco de Goya and Alfred Kubin;
– The Man as the Beast in works by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Curt Grosspietsch;
– Surrealist and autodidactic ways dealing with the subconscious in the works of René Magritte, Pablo Picasso, Dorothea Tanning, Unica Zürn, and Hirschvogel, Franz Roh, Hans Bellmer.
Touching on both aspects of bestial cruelty and the manifestations of sexuality as an aspiration of life – suggesting that the latter may be humanity’s only hope to avert its own everlasting self-destruction and potential extinction.
Curated by: Julietta Scharf, Elena Voronovich
Léon TUTUNDJIAN, Sans titre, 1927. FGA-BA-TUTUN-0013 © Crédit photographique : Fondation Gandur pour l’Art, Genève. Photographe : Lucas Olivet, © 2025, ProLitteris, Zurich
Fondation Gandur pour l’Art
Drawing Modernity: Works on Paper from the Gandur Foundation for Art.
For its fourth participation in the Art Genève fair, the Gandur Foundation for Art is presenting a selection of 35 drawings from the 1920s, showcasing a lesser-known aspect of its collections. This contrasts with the Foundation’s previous exhibitions of abstract art, which have consistently focused on works created after 1945.
This chronological exception stems from Jean Claude Gandur’s discovery of the purist works by Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier, who, starting in 1918, developed a new artistic approach aimed at revitalizing modern art. Both artists, convinced of the impending arrival of a new world driven by technological and scientific advancements, distilled the objects they depicted into their geometric essence. At the same time, other artists from the Parisian avant-garde, also seeking a visually accessible language, reduced the world to squares, triangles, cylinders, circles, or diamonds. This mechanical approach to form drew directly from the machine-driven universe, whose rhythms would long govern human life.
La Fondation Gandur pour l’Art
Founded in 2010 by art collector and entrepreneur Jean Claude Gandur, the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art (FGA) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering understanding of cultural heritage and promoting education by providing public access to its internationally renowned collections. The Foundation’s holdings span five distinct areas: archaeology, fine arts, decorative arts, ethnology, and contemporary African and diaspora art.
Based in Geneva, the Foundation is committed to preserving, enriching, and showcasing the works in its care. In May 2024, Jean Claude Gandur announced plans to establish a museum in Caen, Normandy, by 2030. This museum will permanently house and display the Foundation’s collections.
Curated by: Bertrand Dumas
Art Genève 2023, Barry Flanagan
Art Genève 2016, Private Collection, Annik Wetter
Art Genève 2017, Adel Abdessemed, Annik Wetter
Art Genève 2018, Mark Leckey Felix
Art Genève 2019, The Estate Show, Julien Gremaud
Art Genève 2020, Royal Academy of Arts, Julien Gremaud
Ports Francs
This program has been made possible thanks to the support of Ports Francs.
Dedicated to serving Geneva’s economy, the Geneva Free Ports and Warehouses are pleased to support Art Genève in its mission to promote artistic initiative and collections. This includes thoughtfully curated, non-commercial exhibitions presented by foundations, as well as institutional and private collections. These exhibitions provide the public with a unique opportunity to discover diverse, meaningful works within an exceptional space for artistic discovery and dialogue.
We are proud to support this event, which plays a vital role in enriching the cultural landscape and strengthening Geneva’s international reputation.