In the very tight club of galleries with global influence, Hauser & Wirth had not yet invested in Paris. After Larry Gagosian, in 2010, and David Zwirner, in 2019, the Swiss couple is taking up residence in a city that has become desirable again. In the spring of 2023, the sixteenth space of the gallery from Zurich will open in the golden triangle, between the Champs-Elysées and avenue Montaigne, at 26 bis from rue François-Ier.
From 1955 to 2018, the mansion was the historic headquarters of Europe 1, which has since migrated to the 15e borough. Hauser & Wirth will rent 800 square meters on three floors there to the investment fund which bought the three buildings occupied by the radio station from the Lagardère group in 2018.
Timeless artists and stars of the moment
Manuela Hauser and Iwan Wirth attract major collectors with their apparent simplicity. Manuela, daughter of billionaire Ursula Hauser – one of the greatest Swiss collectors, who made her fortune in the trade – rarely lets go of her knitting. Neither she nor her husband talk about money. Their turnover, which we imagine to be stratospheric, is a well-kept secret. Their catalog includes as many timeless artists as stars of the moment: Louise Bourgeois and Sophie Taeuber-Arp rub shoulders with the Americans Rashid Johnson and Mark Bradford or the Frenchman Pierre Huyghe.
In thirty years, with the support of Ursula Hauser, the couple created an empire which now shines in London, New York, Los Angeles, where they have created a gigacomplex in the city center, as well as in Monaco, where they settled near the Hôtel de Paris, a familiar haunt of the ultra-rich passing through the Rock.
But that’s not all. The ambitious couple has also deployed in Somerset, England, Balmoral, on Scottish royal lands, and Menorca, in the Balearic Islands: three bucolic sites where they have created ultra-chic estates combining nature, gastronomy and business. Hauser & Wirth has been trying to establish itself in Paris for almost fifteen years. “At the time, we wanted to settle near Parisian museums, where the majority of our artists were well received”, says Marc Payot, partner and co-president of the multinational.
The fantasy of the mansion
A place had been found by Argentinian Luis Laplace, the interior designer who has been fitting out their various sites since 2013: rue du Cirque, almost opposite the Bristol. “We were taken with the opening of our spaces in Somerset and in Los Angeles, says Iwan Wirth. To open a third place at the same time was to risk ruining everything. » However, the idea matured. In ten years, the couple of gallerists visited nearly a hundred spaces from Saint-Germain-des-Prés, so popular with tourists, to the Marais, finally judged “too difficult to access”. “We wanted a private mansion, says Marc Payot. It is the absolute fantasy of foreign galleries and artists. »
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