GENEVA.- The Fondation Gandur pour l’Art announced the publication of its first catalogue, dedicated to the bronze section of its Ancient Egypt collection. This reference work - the first in a series - confirms the FGA’s commitment to make its collections easily accessible.
“This volume marks the culmination of a process that has progressively led me to share what was a secret garden for almost thirty years,” confided Jean Claude Gandur, arts collector and founder of the Fondation Gandur pour l’Art. “The essential driver of that change took place just over ten years ago when the curators of Geneva’s Art and History Museum (Les musées d’art et d’histoire de la Ville de Genève - MAH) told me that the objects in my archaeology collection were of significant artistic and academic interest.”
The catalogue presents a selection of over 100 copper, bronze, silver and gold sculptures from the FGA’s archaeology collection, with a descriptive notice for each. Two introductions offer complementary perspectives of the selection. The first is devoted to the production and use of the objects. It is signed by Robert Steven Bianchi, chief curator at the FGA, in charge of its archaeology collection, and former curator at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York. The second contribution, signed by Christiane Ziegler, honorary director of the department of Egyptian Antiquities at the Louvre Museum in Paris, describes the specificities of the collection.
“The decision to give pride of place to metals in Ancient Egyptian art for this first volume came naturally in view of my past,” explained Jean Claude Gandur. “My childhood in Alexandria gave me an early contact with the remains of Egyptian civilisation - the main cradle of Greek, Roman and Judeo-Christian cultures. My later visits to the museums in Athens and Delphi fuelled my passion for works in bronze.”
Making art accessible
This catalogue is the first in a series of volumes that will each focus on a period, movement or theme related to the Foundation’s collections: archaeology (Egyptian, Classical and Near Eastern antiquities); 20th century paintings (post-war European and American abstraction; narrative figuration); or the decorative arts (furniture, clocks and decorative objects from medieval to modern times).
Published by the art editor Till Schaap Edition, Egyptian Bronzes – Fondation Gandur de l’Art is on sale in book shops in English and French (27,5 x 25,5 cm, 300 p., 145 colour illustrations, hardcover, ISBN 978-3-03828-097-2).
