Just over a year after Ernst Beyeler’s death, his long-running Galerie Beyeler, housed in the same whitewashed, blue-shuttered Basel building ever since the aspiring dealer took over a friend’s book shop some 65 years ago, has announced that it will close and auction off its inventory.
When the venerable modern art dealer died early last year, at 88, he left behind the gallery he founded as a young man, as well as the Fondation Beyeler, a museum built by Renzo Piano to house Ernst and Hildy Beyeler’s collection of Impressionist, postwar American, Oceanic and African art.
As stipulated in the Beyelers’ wills, the entire proceeds of the auction, to be held at Christie’s London on June 21 and 22, will be used to support Fondation Beyeler, located on the outskirts of Basel in Riehen. The sale occurs just days after the close of this year’s Art Basel, the international art fair cofounded by Beyeler in 1970.
Further details of the sale will be announced next week. In the meantime, a selection of works from the collection is on view at Christie’s New York, running through next Wednesday at 12 PM.