This is a unique chance to see works from two remarkable private Swiss collections. It pays tribute to two pioneering supporters of modernism, Rudolf Staechelin (1881–1946) and Karl Im Obersteg (1883–1969), industrialists and businessmen, close friends, and enthusiastic champions of impressionist, post-impressionist, and school of Paris artists.

Gauguin to Picasso, Masterworks from Switzerland features over sixty celebrated paintings from their collections, created during the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century by twenty-two world-famous artists. Masterpieces include Paul Gauguin's Nafea faa ipoipo (When will you Marry?) (1892), the most expensive work of art ever sold, Vincent van Gogh's Daubigny's Garden (1890), Pablo Picasso's double-sided canvas Femme dans la loge / Buveuse d'absinthe (1901), and Marc Chagall's three monumental Rabbi portraits. There are extraordinary paintings by artists of international stature including Swiss master Ferdinand Hodler, Russian expressionist painter Alexej Jawlensky, works by Edouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Claude Monet, Amedeo Modigliani, Georges Rouault, and Wassily Kandinsky.

The volume also studies how Staechlin and Im Obersteg developed friendships with and influenced the work of artists, and how they came to create two of the most significant collections of modern art in Europe.

Dorothy Kosinski is the director of The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC.

Hans-Joachim Müller is an art critic at the German weekly paper Die Zeit and the culture editor at Basler Zeitung

Henriette Mentha is the Curator of the Im Obersteg Collection at the Kunstmuseum Basel.

Renée Maurer is assistant curator, The Phillips Collection.