Swiss art dealer, auctioneer and collector Eberhard Kornfeld bequeathed five paintings to the Kunstmuseum Bern, including a 1919 work by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Junkerboden and Alberto Giacometti’s 1965 portrait, Carolina.
The other paintings in the legacy, which will be on display at the Kunstmuseum from Friday, are from 1893 by Alfred Sisley. The church of Moret Sur Loingby Sam Francis Blue, Red and Yellow (1958), and Giovanni Giacometti’s self-portrait from 1909.
Kornfeld was a longtime patron of the Kunstmuseum and had previously donated graphic works by Maurice de Vlaminck and Alfred Kubin and a mobile by Alexander Calder.
Giovanni Giacometti, Self portrait (1909)
Museum director Nina Zimmer said the bequeathed paintings were “carefully selected” by Kornfeld. “Each work fills a gap in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Bern,” he said in a statement.
Kornfeld built up a large personal collection during his eight-decade career. In the 1940s he started working as a merchant in Bern and participated in the creation of Art Basel and the Kirchner Museum in Davos. He counted Marc Chagall, Giacometti and Pablo Picasso among his friends.
After Cornelius Gurlitt’s collection was revealed to the public in 2013, it received a lot of media coverage. Gurlitt inherited the collection from his father, a dealer who bought art for the Nazis and acquired some works stolen from the Jews.
Kornfeld’s commercial dealings with the reclusive Gurlitt date back at least to the 1980s, and he is believed to have influenced Gurlitt’s decision in 2014 to leave his collection to the Kunstmuseum Bern.
