Swiss Allure, Art and Auction

Galerie Gmurzynska, the specialist in Russian avant-garde and classic modern artists long based in Cologne, is celebrating its 40th anniversary by opening a new flagship space this month in Zurich. Co-directors Mathias Rastorfer and Krystyna Gmurzynska will now be based in the Swiss city.

"The U.S. and Switzerland are the easiest countries in terms of freedom to trade with art," says Rastorfer, who relocated to Zurich this summer. Other countries have as little state intervention, guidelines, fees and taxes such as VAT or droit de suite."

The spectacular new gallery, at Paradeplatz 2, covers three floors of a 19th -century patrician town house, with wrought-iron balconies over- looking Zurich 's most famous square. "Paradeplatz is a magical place," says Gmurzynska,, the daughter of gallery founder Antonina Gmurzynska. The fact that the first Dada exhibition in Switzerland opened in 1917 in a space just next door to our new premises sums up wonderfully our tradition and future plans of bringing together the old and the new."

The inaugural exhibition is a one-man show by Alexander Calder, from November 12 through March 2006. “Calder – The Modernist” features a mixture of loans and works for sale that focus on the artist's most important material from the 1930s and '40s. “Pieces from this period are the most difficult to find,” says Rastorfer, who has included sculptures such as Black Skeleton, from 1945, and Constellation, from 1943. The Calder show will be followed by a 20th-century survey juxtaposing works by El Lissitzky, Kasimir Malevich and Aleksandr Rodchenko with such classic modern artists as Alexander Calder, Joan Mirö and Pablo Picasso.

Galerie Gmurzynska is retaming its Cologne premises and continues to operate two smaller spaces in St. Moritz (open during the winter) and Zug, Switzerland. It has hired Raul Suarez as vice president of the Zurich and Zug galleries. Formerly in charge of private clients at Phillips and Sotheby 's New York, Suarez was most recently a private dealer of 20th-century and contemporary art in New York, and has been based in Zurich since August.

All three are excited by their move, not just in terms of business but also quality of life. "Zurich is international—it has the lake in front of our door and the mountains for skiing, says Rastorfer. “Above all, I like its mixture of openness and brilliant cultural life.”

BETTINA VON HASE