The art world’s next battleground? Ski resorts

Forget the Winter Olympics. The latest battle in the Alps is between the Swiss ski resorts of St Moritz and Gstaad, competing to be the art venue of choice for their well-heeled clientele.

Each seems similar to those of us on lower ground, offering the rewards of five-star hotels, Michelin-starred restaurants and luxury goods boutiques in the wells of their manicured slopes.

Their art offerings are also rich. Both have intimate art fairs, international gallery outposts and seasonal stand-out commissions, as well as home-grown spaces, notably theStable — a gallery in St Moritz’s surrounding Engadin Valley — and Tarmak22, named after the runway that it overlooks at Saanen-Gstaad’s private jet airport.

There are differences. “If you want to explore historic Engadin towns full of storied and grand hotels, bump into artists and their families and have the flashiest après-ski, head to St Moritz. If you want a traditional Swiss town full of delicious food and new projects, go to Gstaad,” says the London-based art adviser Janna Lang, who takes collectors to the region every year.

The higher St Moritz has long held the jet-set gold medal. Its list of legends range from Friedrich Nietzsche to Roger Moore’s James Bond, while artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Gerhard Richter are among those who have been inspired by its sublime landscapes. Meanwhile, St Moritz’s vast private jet airport, Samedan, is well-known to the Davos glitterati.

Legendary hotels include the Kulm, now owned by the Niarchos shipping family, and currently displaying a hot pink carousel by the conceptual artist Carsten Höller on its ice rink. The Engadin also boasts the Chesa Marchetta opposite Nietzsche’s house in Sils Maria and now with Paul McCarthy’s bulbous 2004 “Santa Long Neck (Bronze)” standing outside, and Hotel Castell in neighbouring Zuoz (due to close for renovations next month), famed for its art talks and Pipilotti Rist’s sensually-lit Red Bar. Both hotels are owned by Artfarm, the hospitality arm of Hauser & Wirth, which also has galleries in Gstaad and St Moritz: the latter currently has a show of Giacometti’s portrayals of family and Alpine scenes.

Gstaad is fast catching up with St Moritz’s cultural credentials. These were boosted by the Swiss art patron Maja Hoffmann, founder and president of the Luma Foundation, when she launched the site-specific exhibition Elevation 1049 there in 2014 (named after the resort’s altitude in metres). Expanding to St Moritz in 2022, its current project — Gerhard Richter’s glossy “Strip Tower (962)” — is on the Sils Maria snow, though next year returns to Gstaad. Galleries that have opened in Gstaad alongside Hauser & Wirth include Gagosian and Almine Rech. 

The region’s art fairs show a similar trajectory. St Moritz was there first, with Nomad opening in 2018 with just 20 high-calibre exhibitors, including Massimo de Carlo and Eva Presenhuber. “The first edition set the tone for a boutique fair in the area,” says co-founder Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte. His fair, also in Abu Dhabi and launching in The Hamptons this year, has an emphasis on design, and grew to 34 exhibitors in St Moritz last year. These were down to 18 this year (the fair ran from Feb 12-15), each taking a different room in a former orthopaedic clinic called the Villa Beaulieu. 

Bellavance-Lecompte says that “new fire regulations mean that we had to close some rooms this time” (in response to the New Year’s Day fire in the Swiss resort of Crans-Montana). Exhibitor Rajan Bijlani says that “while it wasn’t quite as crazy as last year, we made some good sales,” notably of furniture by the 20th-century Swiss architect Pierre Jeanneret.

Snapping at Nomad’s heels is Maze Art, a fair group that opened in Gstaad just two years ago and whose exhibitor numbers have doubled to more than 50 this time. The salon, which now operates nine such events around the world, comes courtesy of Thomas Hug, who co-directed Artgenève until 2023, when allegations of fraud and theft ended his relationship with fair owners Palexpo. Hug maintained his innocence though is not commenting on the situation as the investigation is ongoing.

Newcomers to this weekend’s Maze Art in Gstaad range from the antiquities outfit Jean-David Cahn and medieval manuscript specialists Dr Jörn Gunther Rare Books to contemporary art galleries including Thaddaeus Ropac, Lisson and Mendes Wood DM. Vintage watch dealer Karry Berreby features too, while the fair’s sponsors include watchmaker FP Journe, Chanel high jewellery and the auction house Phillips.

Ropac, whose debut includes local hero Not Vital and the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, finds that while “many art fairs around the world are like big operas, Maze Art Gstaad is chamber music.” 

Zurich dealer Larkin Erdmann is back for the second time with work including a red Alexander Calder mobile and a work on paper by Augusto Giacometti (a second cousin to Alberto’s father). Erdmann says that one thing that Maze has got right for gallerists is its intimate, yet no-frills, format. Held in a central, bespoke festival marquee, “there is no VIP opening, it is free to enter, people just walk in and buy things — and you meet them directly,” he says. Erdmann, who adds that he had six-figure sales in Gstaad last year, is among the exhibitors at Maze’s first fully-fledged fair in St Moritz later this month.

He and the fair’s organisers underline that Maze’s visitors are people who live in the region as much as those there for a swish half-term holiday. Maze’s artistic director, Baptiste Janin, says that “collectors are present not as hurried visitors navigating a packed itinerary, but as residents” (although they may have more than one home).

Lang identifies a younger crop of “great gallerists and curators” among the next generations, notably in Gstaad, making their mark in a region they grew up knowing well. These include Tatiana De Pahlen, granddaughter of dynastic industrialist Giovanni Agnelli. She co-founded Tarmak22 and is now on the sales team at Gagosian in Gstaad. The gallery, which opened a show of the photographer Irving Penn last week, “gets busier and busier every year”, De Pahlen says. Her Gagosian colleague Carolyn Hodler Franks, “a distant relation” to the Swiss painter Ferdinand Hodler, says that Gstaad’s proximity to international schools, such as JFK in Saanen and Swiss boarding school Le Rosey, contributes to its “year-round community” of serious collectors.

With so much art to see and buy, does anyone actually ski? More in St Moritz, which also has the Cresta run — a skeleton-toboggan racing track — for the truly daring. But, Lang says, not so much: “If you want to eat a power bar and throw yourself off a mountain on skis, you go to Jackson Hole [a resort in Wyoming]. But if you want to leisurely ski, lunch and see great art then you go to St Moritz or Gstaad.”