Angela Rosengart poses next to the portraits that Picasso made of her in her youth
Angela Rosengart (Lucerne, 1932) It is impossible for him to miss an appointment at her museum. She won't even be late 5 minutes for free because she lives in it all day. Over time, she has made number 10 Pilatusstrasse in Lucerne her true home because her paintings are there, although they are signed by Klee, picasso either Matisse she considers “part of my soul”. Neither the numerous commitments in which her presence is required, nor her age **hers (she turns 80 this year)** tear her away from this old bench transformed into an art gallery. A building that in its sobriety winks at its interior since the names of its star artists are fixed on the frieze of the facade, leaving little room for speculation about what it keeps inside. In the two floors of galleries she treasures almost 300 works of art by artists she calls 'modernist classics'.
Angela Rosengart began to collect encouraged by her father Siegfried de Ella, responsible for years of the Tannhauser Gallery of the Swiss city. And, while her father protected and guided her, together they began to work on her own museum, which she managed to open 10 years ago. “My father and I put all our hearts into building this collection, not just building a collection but building a whole.” And under this premise they started this adventure in which Angela has only allowed herself to be guided by her father “He above all gave me advice with which he encouraged me to start my own collection. He told me to do it from the heart.”
And so she did, acquiring her first work while she was still a teenager. She remembers it clearly as she points to it: “It was a Paul Klee called Little X. I remember spending my first savings on it” . The basement floor is almost a labyrinth of works by this master of the abstract expressionism . Small drawings, children's doodles before the most inexperienced eyes, which occupy a large part of said floor. "I recognize that it is one of my weaknesses" says Angela proudly. "As a young man I was struck by his originality and his prolific career." In addition, her compatriot claims to have the honor of having put Switzerland on the art map.
Angela Rosengart next to the photographs of David Douglas Duncan
Paul Klee is one of the two painters who stand out among the list of up to 23 creators who sign the canvases hanging on the walls. The other is Pablo Picasso, who has not only earned this honor because of his indisputable fame. For Angela, he was always a friend to both her father and his "and the whole family." The collection of works by Picasso occupies the main floor of the museum and is considered one of the most important of the period of the Malaga after the Second World War. A series that Angela vehemently defends against those who claim to be her younger years: “He is a different Picasso, a more mature and misunderstood style but one that captivates me”.
“I met Pablo when he was 17 years old. He impressed me a lot with his look and his way of being. Just by looking at him you could tell he was a genius. The mere presence of him filled everything ”she affirms. For this reason, the cult of his person is not only reduced to her paintings. A large room with photographs by David Douglas Duncan They show the studio where Pablo was inspired and painted. But she does not consider it a tribute to the artist but rather “a fundamental part of understanding his work. It seems important to me that people see where he worked, how he created, made mistakes and corrected; It helps me spread the image I have of him.”
The relationship between Pablo and Angela traveled from reality to the pictures. "Once I visited him, he took the opportunity to paint a series of portraits that he ended up giving me." It is precisely at this moment that the widest smile appears on Angela's face and she shows a small room where 5 of her faces hang, embodied under the brilliant optics of Picasso. She poses proudly, delighted, while her drawn eyes look at her with amazement and she answers them with care and affection, as if it were a trip back in time to her youth.
Picasso's work shines with a special light in the Angela Rosengart museum
And so he spends his days, contemplating his little treasure from which he cannot be separated. “I've been here since before the museum opens and I leave when everything is closed. The days I can't come, I miss it. This is my true home.” His collection is practically finished, although he considers that he no longer plays in the same League as the rest of the tycoons who bid at auctions and pay real millions for some paintings: “I am incapable. I want quality but quality is now so expensive that all I can do is go, look and come back empty handed.”
This inflation seems exorbitant: “For me, no painting is worth 100 million. I hope that this speculation ends soon and that art is again affordable so that those of us who love it can buy again. For all these reasons, she considers herself a "real lucky person" although that does not mean that she does not claim the work of a lifetime . "It has cost me a lot, but I think that the museum and the Foundation are a way of summarizing my work and that of my father to the world."
Before, all his works slept in his house or were transferred to other museums. “I made the decision to bring them all here to have a place to come and admire them. A site that was mine and the whole world. At first it was almost a trauma to remove them from my walls, so this museum is now my true home.” Her relationship with her paintings is so intimate and close that, despite the fact that the works of Klee and Picasso are required by large museums for temporary exhibitions, she refuses to lend them: "They have to understand that I can't be separated from any of them even for a few months."