Raoul La Roche

Raoul La Roche

Raoul La Roche (born February 23, 1889 in Basel ; † June 15, 1965 ibid) was a Swiss banker, patron and art collector who lived in Paris for a long time.

life and work

Raoul La Roche attended schools in Basel and became a banker like his father. After stays in Berlin and London, he worked from 1911 to 1954, and later headed the foreign department of Banque Suisse et Française (from 1917 Crédit Commercial de France) in Paris. In 1913 he became a member, later General Secretary and President of the Société Helvétique de Bienfaisance, and he also served as secretary and treasurer of the Maison Suisse de Retraite.

In 1918, at a meal, La Roche met Pierre-Edouard Jeanneret, who later called himself Le Corbusier , and soon after met Amédée Ozenfant . In the same year Jeanneret oil paintings began to paint, held together with Ozenfant an exhibition and reasoned with the polemic après le Cubisme the purism . La Roche started buying friends' pictures. The four auctions in which the French state sold Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler's art holdings from 1921–1923 , which had been confiscated during World War I because the Parisian gallery owner was a German citizen, were decisive for his collection . Prices were low and La Roche, animated, advised and represented at auctions by his artist friends, acquired numerous Cubist paintings, including major works by Picasso , Braque and Juan Gris . In the following years he bought other works of art from the trade. In doing so, he remained true to his restriction to cubism and purism: he also acquired paintings from the period after 1920 almost exclusively from Fernand Léger , and in 1929 the collection was completed for him. He did not seek personal contact with "his" artists.

Model of the Maison La Roche by Le Corbusier, 1923-25

Le Corbusier had La Roche build a house with a gallery in the Paris outskirts of Auteuil . The "Maison La Roche", also known as "Villa La Roche" or "Villa La Rocca", is located next to the house that the architect built for his brother Albert Jeanneret at the same time and was completed in March 1925. The construction with the help of reinforced concrete allowed free design, the rooms were differentiated in color. It was important to Le Corbusier that not all walls were hung with pictures. The building became an icon of new construction and attracted so much interest that La Roche, whose graciousness is widely praised, was opened to visitors. The guest book lists numerous prominent names. The MaisonLa Roche is still open to the public.

In the 1930s, Raoul La Roche began to lend works from his collection generously and also to give some of them away. The Kunsthaus Zurich was able to show in 1932 to a larger group of images. During the war years, which La Roche lived "under the most difficult conditions in Lyon and later in Paris", his house and the collection were spared losses. In 1950 the Kunstmuseum Basel received fourteen works as a long-term deposit, which resulted in an initial donation of 24 works in 1952: four pictures by Picasso, nine by Bracque, five by Gris, four by Léger and one each by Le Corbusier and Ozenfant. Two further donations followed in 1955 and 1963, so that in the end more than half of the collection, in addition to paintings and works on paper, also four sculptures by Jacques Lipchitz came to Basel. At the same time, nine important works were sent to the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris, not least as compensation for the permission to export the rest of the collection from France.

In 1962, Raoul La Roche, who suffered from a serious rheumatic disease, gave up his Parisian residence and returned to his hometown. He donated the "Maison La Roche" to the Fondation Le Corbusier . His hometown honored him with an honorary doctorate that same year.

literature

• Katharina Schmidt, Hartwig Fischer (ed.): A house for cubism. The Raoul La Roche Collection. Kunstmuseum Basel (exhibition catalog). Gerd Hatje, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998, ISBN 3-7757-0754-9 .
• Christian Geelhaar: Kunstmuseum Basel. The history of the painting collection and a selection of 250 masterpieces . Association of Friends of the Art Museum, Basel 1992, pp. 239–244.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hermann Matthey: Allocution . In: In memory of Mr. Raoul Albert La Roche . Private printing, Basel 1965, p. 15f.
2. ^ Tim Benton: "Villa La Rocca". The planning and construction history of Villa La Roche . In: Katharina Schmidt, Hartwig Fischer (ed.): A house for cubism. The Raoul La Roche Collection. Kunstmuseum Basel (exhibition catalog). Gerd Hatje, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998, ISBN 3-7757-0754-9 , pp. 227-263.
3. ^ Katharina Schmidt: Raoul La Roche. In: Katharina Schmidt, Hartwig Fischer (ed.): A house for cubism. The Raoul La Roche Collection. Kunstmuseum Basel (exhibition catalog). Gerd Hatje, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998, ISBN 3-7757-0754-9 , p. 17f.
4. ↑ Further information and opening times .
5. ↑ In memory of Mr. Raoul Albert La Roche . Private printing, Basel 1965, p. 6.
6. ^ Katharina Schmidt: Raoul La Roche . In: Katharina Schmidt, Hartwig Fischer (ed.): A house for cubism. The Raoul La Roche Collection. Kunstmuseum Basel (exhibition catalog). Gerd Hatje, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998, ISBN 3-7757-0754-9 , p. 10f.
7. ↑ Inventories of the La Roche Collection have not survived. A list of all documented works by Katharina Schmidt, Hartwig Fischer (ed.): A house for cubism. The Raoul La Roche Collection. Kunstmuseum Basel (exhibition catalog). Gerd Hatje, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998, ISBN 3-7757-0754-9 , pp. 305-314, the donations to the Kunstmuseum Basel ibid. Pp. 315f.
8. ^ Didier Schulman: Raoul La Roche and the Musée national d'art moderne, Paris . In: Katharina Schmidt, Hartwig Fischer (ed.): A house for cubism. The Raoul La Roche Collection. Kunstmuseum Basel (exhibition catalog). Gerd Hatje, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998, ISBN 3-7757-0754-9 , pp. 289-296.