Art World Powerhouse
Isabelle Bscher, the art historian and proprietor of Galerie Gmurzynska, has an innovative exhibition featuring the work of two artists of the same family, Joan Miró and his grandson, Joan Punyet Miró.
“Joan Miró: Paintings and Sculptures” is a tribute to the late Spanish artist combining paintings, sculptures, and works on paper as well as found objects. It spans from his early-career masterpieces to his groundbreaking late bronze sculptures.
In “Joan Punyet Miró: Ecological Abstraction” the gallery displays the grandson’s abstractions, an urgent response to the global environmental crisis intended to heal humankind’s sensibility toward nature.
Galerie Gmurzynska
The shows, in separate venues at Gmurzynska’s two Zurich locations, will come this fall to New York, at the gallery’s Upper East Side space, with some different works. “We’re bringing it to New York, but in a different version,” Bscher says. This is in part because the grandson’s work sold out completely in Zurich.
The simultaneous exhibitions came about organically, as Galerie Gmurzynska has represented the Miró estate since the 1990s and has worked with Joan Punyet Miró since 1998. “In that time we’ve developed a deep friendship, and he’s been making music, painting more and more, and we’ve seen his artistic development,” Bscher says, adding that they did a show with him in 2015 in Zurich and another in 2020 in Monaco with Prince Albert.
Richard Phillips’s Oscar Nominees
Bscher is excited to mount her first show of Richard Phillips, the renowned American contemporary artist. The exhibition in Zurich will focus on Phillips’s painted portraits of 2024 Academy Award nominees, which were commissioned by Stefano Tonchi as part of TheWrapBook.
“He’s such a great painter and draftsman,” Bscher says. “They’re really spectacular, and they haven’t been shown before.” Subjects include Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy, and — oops! — Margot Robbie. “He thought she was nominated because she was the talk of the town with Barbie, but she wasn’t. But I’m so happy he painted one anyway, because it’s the most beautiful portrait of her.” The exhibit will launch in October during the Zurich Film Festival.
Roberto Matta and Female Artists in New York City
In New York, Galerie Gmurzynska has a big show by Chilean surrealist Roberto Matta in the works, followed by a group show of female artists that the gallery has long represented. These include Tamara de Lempicka, Varvara Stepanova, Olga Rozanova, Alice Neel, Barbara Kruger, and Sarah Morris.
Anh Duong
Also showing along with the female artists will be Anh Duong, the French-American artist, actress, and model known for her self-portraiture and portraits of influential folks. Bscher had long admired Duong’s work, and the two struck up a relationship after meeting through the photographer-collector Johnny Pigozzi. “She has this very honest way of portraying, and very unique style,” Bscher says. “I think she’s one of the best portrait painters. I think she gets the soul and the essence of a person when she paints them.”
Bscher recalls that when Duong was romantically involved with Julian Schnabel, she picked up a paintbrush after a long hiatus. He told her, “These are really good. You shouldn’t stop doing that.”
Wilfredo Lam at MoMA
Galerie Gmurzynska is working with the family of the late Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam on a 2025 solo retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. “The MoMA was one of the first to purchase a major Lam piece, and The Jungle, probably his most famous painting, is in the MoMA,” Bscher says. She noted that the artist had a phenomenal show at the Asia Society during Art Basel Hong Kong in 2024, significant because Lam’s father had Cantonese roots.
Third Generation Woman-Owned Gallery
Bscher is from the third generation of her family to run Galerie Gmurzynska, which was founded by her grandmother, Antonina Gmurzynska, in Cologne, Germany. Isabelle’s mother, Krystyna Gmurzynska, took over the gallery in 1985 and relocated the flagship to Switzerland in 2005. Mother and daughter now work together. With four locations — two in Zurich, one in Zug, Switzerland, and another in New York City — they represent major modern artists like Picasso, Miró, Kandinsky, Christo, and Louise Nevelson, as well as Karl Lagerfeld’s photography, Sylvester Stallone’s paintings, and architects Zaha Hadid and Richard Meier, who once designed the gallery’s booth at Art Basel Miami.
Bscher grew up in the gallery, which was connected to the family’s house in its early years in Cologne, and she was surrounded by priceless Picassos and glittering art-world personalities. At various art fairs she has collaborated with renowned creatives like Baz Luhrmann and the late Germano Celant, former artistic director of the Prada Foundation, on designing her gallery’s booths.
“We’re very well known for working with creative geniuses who might be from other backgrounds, like Zaha Hadid,” Bscher explains. In fact, the gallery’s Paradeplatz location in Zurich houses the late architect’s very last interior project, a design for a 2016 exhibition celebrating Dada master Kurt Schwitters.
Galerie Gmurzynska | gmurzynska.com
