Jan Krugier, being and drawing

Based in Geneva, Jan Krugier is one of the leading figures of the international art market. Passionate about drawing, he has built up a remarkable collection that covers five centuries of Western art.

Where does this taste and passion for art come from?
I owe everything to my father who was a very modest but passionate collector. He taught me to look at a painting, especially through the black and white reproductions of the small books published by Braun. He put tracing paper on the reproductions and explained to me the golden ratio, the vanishing point, cold and warm colors, chiaroscuro.

Is it the case that your taste for drawing was forged because these reproductions were in black and white, thus bringing out more the graphic values of the images you were studying?
No, not really, even when using the tracing paper, everything was indeed through drawing: the lines, the masses... But before devoting my life to it, my taste for art went through extreme periods. When the war broke out and I saw the Nazi soldiers come into our house and steal everything, I began to hate art. The child I was did not understand why the canvas or dresser that my father cherished so much did not burst. They were allowing themselves to get caught, in a way, quite simply. Everything was going like this, without protest. At the end of the war in 1945, I was adopted in Zurich by a remarkable woman, Margaret Bleuler, whom I consider to be my second mother; she and her family collected Hodler, Amiet, and Balthus among others. I found myself again in the artistic climate of my childhood, this link with my lost father. However, it was impossible for me to look at a work of art, so extreme was my revolt; the rejection was total.

Did this state of mind last a long time?
About a year. A way out opened when I had the chance to meet Martin Buber, the great philosopher of German origin. With simple and genuine words and gestures and infinite patience, he helped me to move on from the ordeals I had experienced, to appease my revolt, and finally to forge an identity around this love of art that transcends my life. So I decided to study art and applied arts at the famous Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich, under the tutelage of Johannes Itten, one of the masters of the Bauhaus. He helped me a lot. During a stay in the Grisons where I had a studio, I met Giacometti; his friendship was decisive and, at the end of 1948, I moved to Paris. After a tragicomic stint in André Lhote’s studio, I started working alone and, to cover some of my expenses, I opened my studio in the cité Falguière to a few students. Despite all the difficulties of the post-war period, it was an exhilarating and very fertile experience. I met Giacometti and artists such as Nicolas de Stael, Charchoune, and many others.

Were you living off your painting then?
No. So, because I couldn’t do that, or even escape the “monologue in front of the blank canvas,” I went back to Switzerland and became an art advisor to various institutions. In 1955, I teamed up with Jacques Bénador and seven years later I opened my first Krugier and Co. gallery. It was at this time that I really started my career as an art dealer by exhibiting Bram Van Velde, Giacometti, Morandi –it was his first exhibition abroad– and then making thematic exhibitions, Dada, Futurism, Hello Mr. Courbet. I continued this activity by opening the Jan Krugier Gallery in 1972.

In regards to your interest in drawing, we can assume that your friendship with Giacometti must have been decisive.
More: it was even essential. I have often seen him at work. What struck me when he made a portrait was that he always started with the eyes; but what was probably even more terrifying for him was the anxiety he had over doing something. He always had either a hammer or a knife near him to destroy the sculpture or painting he had begun. He was obsessed with going beyond the stage of doing and nothing worried him more than getting there.

On the subject of drawing, since 1972 you have built up a quite exceptional collection of drawings that includes some six hundred pieces and covers five centuries of artistic production, of all styles and techniques. So what are you so interested in with drawing?
What I learned with Alberto: you can’t cheat with drawing because it’s the first cry. The canvas, you can correct, redo; pentimento is always possible. In a drawing, you can see everything. That’s what overwhelms me. There is something unique in the drawing, a side... how can I say... “to be or not to be.” Drawing has to do with being.

Are you more sensitive to a particular type of design?
I am interested in all of them, whatever they are, as long as they are of high quality and reflect this dimension of being. However, the preparatory drawings may move me more deeply because we can see the journey. I’ll say it again: you can’t cheat with drawing. Look at Michelangelo, Raphael and the others, it’s all there! You can feel everything.

Why did you want to make a collection so spread out over time?
Because we’re always looking for our tracks. We are children of traces. We are traces ourselves. The footprint of our feet is much more important than our very feet. In the sand, it is overwhelming. It’s all there. As in the caves of Lascaux... I am very attached to the idea of memory. This is why when I started putting on themed exhibitions, I sought to present together modern and old works of art. Drawing has this specific that it goes beyond all aesthetic problems. It’s almost a sacral gesture. Even among Mannerists, whose designs are more elaborate, this is still evident. The same is true in the 19th century, which is a time of great rebirth of drawing. With Ingres, for example, one is easily irritated by a certain classicism, but at the same time one is touched by his technical mastery.

In contemporary artistic production, does drawing give you so much joy?
[...] We are living in terrible times that are in full decline. This is the realm of speculation and manipulation of all kinds and then, I must admit, there is little in all this virtual world of computer science and new technologies that has anything much over the lived experience of drawing.

Interviewed by Philippe Piguet in L’œil – no. 556