How the Zug private collection of Pablo Picasso's series 347 was born
It all started many years ago with a tiny small advertisement: Picasso/Centre de Lithographie. A colleague at work had discovered it and shown it to me. We had probably talked about art and Picasso before, so he knew what I was interested in. So I went there one day. The gallerist, himself an artist of lithography, had taken over a large number of prints from a collection that had been dissolved and was for sale: beautiful large sheets which, as I found out much later, were not available anywhere in stores. I was thrilled and asked the gallery owner to mark two sheets with a green dot, i.e. to make a reservation. The prices were handsome and I didn't want to make this decision alone.
On my next visit, almost all the artworks has been sold, only one remained, which I bought in addition. But now I began to look more closely at Picasso's graphic works. The so-called 347 series got its name because in 1968, at the age of 87, Picasso created these 347 graphic sheets in an incredible frenzy of work, a new one almost every day, up to six on individual days.
Fortunately, during these years the internet became accessible to everyone and so I found out where and in which galleries such graphics were for sale. Our collection grew in small steps. The annual auctions of Galerie Kornfeld in Bern turned out to be real treasure troves.
Later, and after our move to Zug, we met Mr. Haldemann, the director of the Kunsthaus Zug. One day I suggested to him that we juxtapose some of our Picasso with prints from his large collection of the Viennese School in an exhibition. Then Covid came, the museums - on an equal footing with nightclubs - had to close, art fell victim to the plague.
I knew from friends in Zug that Director Haldemann had an excellent long-term memory. Lo and behold, one day he got in touch and asked if our offer was still valid. In the meantime, he had developed the concept of showing entire private collections in Zug. No one refuses such an honorable invitation.
Now the time has come.