Hauser & Wirth Inaugurates Outpost in St. Moritz

The new gallery is 4,400-square-feet and spans three floors. Photo: Katharina Lütscher/Courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth inaugurated a new gallery space in St. Moritz, in the heart of Switzerland’s Engadin Valley, just after Christmas.

The newly opened 4,400-square-foot exhibition space spans three floors of a building owned by Badrutt’s Palace Hotel in the center of St. Moritz. Argentine-born architect Luis Laplace, who has worked on numerous other Hauser & Wirth projects (including the interior design of Le Vieux Chalet in Gstaad and the transformation of Hauser & Wirth’s Somerset compound), oversaw the interior remodeling of the site. On view through February 10, the inaugural exhibition, Papillons Noirs, showcases works by legendary French-American artist Louise Bourgeois.

St. Moritz has long been a hotbed of creativity, with the surrounding area home to the Giacometti family as well as Alpine painter Giovanni Segantini. Over the course of the past two centuries, a range of cultural and intellectual luminaries have come to visit, from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, writer Thomas Mann and dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, to a host of artists including Gerhard Richter, Julian Schnabel, Richard Long, and Joseph Beuys. Legendary connoisseur Bruno Bischofberger was the first gallerist to establish a space in St. Moritz in 1963, and the region is now home to a number of modern and contemporary galleries.

The gallery’s inaugural exhibition is of the works of Louise Bourgeois. Photo: © The Easton Foundation / VAGA at ARS, NY / ProLitteris, Zurich/Courtesy The Easton Foundation and Hauser & Wirth/ Photo by Stephan Altenburger Photography Zürich

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“Our new gallery in St. Moritz represents a return to my earliest steps into the art world and speaks to our DNA as a Swiss gallery,” Iwan Wirth, president and co-founder of Hauser & Wirth, said in a statement. “I organized my first show in St. Moritz in 1987 at age 17, an exhibition that included works by Daniel Spoerri, Le Corbusier, and Marc Chagall, and took place in the Hotel Carlton. Three decades later, we are delighted and honored to open Hauser & Wirth St. Moritz. We are continuing to build on the legacy of the original St. Moritz trailblazer Bruno Bischofberger, and of such titans as Alberto Giacometti and Joseph Beuys. And we look forward to collaborating with Badrutt’s Palace on exciting artistic ventures and to introducing a new audience to the work of our artists and estates.”

Argentine-born architect Luis Laplace designed the gallery. Photo: Katharina Lütscher/Courtesy Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth has locations in New York, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, and Gstaad and represents over 75 artists and estates including those of Allan Kaprow and Philip Guston. A director of the St. Moritz space will be named in the coming months.

Hauser & Wirth St. Moritz is open Tuesday–Sunday, 10am–6pm.