Korine and Max E. Ammann, Switzerland - MEET THE COLLECTOR Series Part Twenty
Korine and Max E. Ammann were mentioned to me by another collector and I’m so glad that I got in touch as part of my ‘Meet the Collector’ series. Not only are they fascinated by and collect outsider art, but Max founded the world cup for jumping riders and is still writing books about this - magnificent! Read on to find out more about them and their collection of thousands of pieces of art.
Max & Korine Ammann at the Outsider Art Museum in Amsterdam. Photo credit: Outsider Art Museum, Amsterdam
1. When did your interests in the field of outsider/folk art begin? When did you become collectors of this art? How many pieces do you think are in your collection now? Do you hang any of the artwork in your collection in your home?
I come from a small village on the Lake of Constance and at that time, three artists lived in Ermatingen. Every year a few artists visited the village to paint outdoors and I started to become interested in their art. One day I got in contact with one of the painters who lived in the village and I started to buy art from him. This was in the mid 1950’s, I was still in high school. I began buying local art, moving later on to Swiss art.
From 1964 – 1973 I was a foreign correspondent, living in New York. During this time, I also had to write about culture. I visited galleries and got to know artists and went to openings. I did not earn much money, because I was paid by Swiss newspapers in Swiss francs and the dollar was very high at that time, so I could not afford to buy any art. In the spring of 1973, I returned with my family to Switzerland to become the chief editor of a daily newspaper in Lucerne. I renewed my interest in Swiss art and then we began to collect international art.
At that time, I had some knowledge of what is called Art Brut/Outsider Art. Adolf Dietrich was a naïve painter who had lived close to my village. I met him in my youth. Also not too far away in Appenzell and the Toggenburg there were artists who did naïve paintings of cows and the alpine scenery. So I had exposure to this art at an early age.
In the early 1990’s we were not happy with contemporary art any more. At that time, we travelled a lot. My wife and I visited the Venice Biennale, the Documenta in Kassel and many museums and galleries all over the world. In the early 1990’s we saw less interesting paintings. There was a lot of conceptual art, installations and video art. I flew five to six times a year to New York. Also there was less and less art that I wanted to buy.
In 1995 I had to go to Lausanne for a meeting and before going back to Berne I went to the Collection de l’Art Brut. There I saw on the wall works by Swiss artists Hans Krüsi and François Burland. These two artists were both in our collection, but we did not buy them as outsiders, we bought them because we liked their work.
I got interested in what I saw in Lausanne and immediately bought some books for research. When I read the books I found out about two exhibition spaces in France – one in Paris (Halle Saint Pierre) and one in Bègles (Musée de la Création Franche) near Bordeaux. I had meetings in both cities, so I visited both places and after this, I was hooked. In Paris in the Halle Saint Pierre, they showed the exhibition “Outsider and Company”. They had invited some major outsider collections such as the Collection de l’Art Brut Lausanne to present themselves. I was fascinated by what I saw. I must add that in the 1970’s, 80’s and early 90’s when we collected contemporary art, I was aware of places like Gugging and the work of Aloise Corbaz and Adolf Wölfli, but this exhibition in Paris led me to being more interested in them. My wife shared my enthusiasm.
There are several thousand pieces in our collection. I do not hang the artwork, my wife does. Our home is full of outsider art, including paintings and sculptures. The rest is kept in storage. We loan artwork to exhibitions. At the moment there are about 35 pieces in Zürich in the Musée Visionnaire (Visionary Museum). We think it is important to show the work of the artists and to make catalogues.
We have participated with works from our collection in over 50 exhibitions around the world, mostly in Europe, but also in the United States and Japan. I was also involved in organising several exhibitions of artists or ateliers with art works not in our collection.
A nice part of our collection is ITE Art from Finland, a country we are quite attached to. In Finland we made over a dozen trips to visit artists. When 130 works were shown in the Musée de la Création Franche in Bègles and in the Outsider Art Museum in the Hermitage in Amsterdam, three catalogues were produced. As we did with the catalogue from our exhibition in Ittingen, we brought the catalogues to the artists shown in the books.
Martine Copenaut, Untitled, 1998. Photographer: Thomas Gerber, Burgdorf, Switzerland
2. Can you tell us a bit more about your background?
In my village my father had a transport and wholesale fruit business. I had a commercial education. But soon I started to write and in 1964 I went to New York as a foreign correspondent and stayed there until 1973 as mentioned above. I wrote about foreign politics, culture and general themes. By 1973 I had a Dutch wife and two sons and moved back to Switzerland to become the chief editor of a daily newspaper in Lucerne. I did this job for six years.
My family background has a lot to do with horses. In the early days a horse was a means of transport and my father used the horses in the business and he also competed in driving with two and four horses. This brought my interest in horse shows. At the end of the 1970’s, I created the World Cup for jumping riders, which is similar to Formula 1 or the Ski World Cup. At that time Prince Philip was President of the International Equestrian Federation. When he received me in Windsor Castle in 1978 he liked my proposal of a World Cup and asked me to run it. Through a friend at Swedish television I got in contact with the president of Volvo who agreed to sponsor the World Cup. In October 1978 the World Cup started and I ran it for 25 years until 2003. As World Cup Director, I was involved in 120 competitions all over the world each year. When I retired in 2003 I continued to write about equestrian sports. Currently I am working on a new book: 120 years of equestrian sport in Switzerland. It will come out in May this year.
Adolf Wölfli, Gruss Göttin, 1921. Photographer: Thomas Gerber, Burgdorf, Switzerland
3. What style of work, if any, is of particular interest to you within this field? (for example is it embroidery, drawing, sculpture, and so on)
There is not a particular style that we are drawn too – we like all artwork, if it touches us. For us outsider art is larger than art brut. Outsider art is four things to us. One - it is art from the mentally handicapped and the mentally ill. Two - it is art from visionaries and mediumistic persons. Three - it is naïve art and memory paintings and four - it is art from social outsiders. We collect all groups. The fourth group is the most difficult to collect as in many countries, especially France, unsuccessful painters try to get into the outsider’s market.
We collect everything that these artists create. That might be drawings, paintings, collages, sculptures and embroideries. We buy what we like and what we can logistically transport and store.
4. Would you say you had a favourite artist or piece of work within your collection? And why?
My wife likes very much a woman from an atelier in Belgium that is attached to the psychiatric clinic called Reine Fabiola in Neufvilles. The name of the atelier is Campagn’Art. The artist is Martine Copenaut, she died some years ago. I do like a male artist from the same atelier called Yves Jules Fleuri. And then, of course Adolf Wölfli – he is the greatest!
My wife also likes younger artists: Jeroen Pomp, Coen Ringeling, Bruno Knechtle, Gildas Baudry, Justyna Matysiak. She could mention more artists, but it would take a couple of pages!
Yves-Jules Fleuri, Déjeuner sur L’Herbe, 2005. Photographer: Thomas Gerber, Burgdorf, Switzerland
5. Is there an exhibition in this field of art that you have felt has been particularly important? And why?
The exhibition I mentioned earlier, in the Halle Saint Pierre in Paris called “Outsider and Company”, had a lot of impact on me. Since then I have seen a few hundred exhibitions of outsider art. I especially like it when they show outsiders and mainstream artists together. There was an exhibition in the Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf some years ago and later in Lausanne, that exhibited 100 works by Jean Dubuffet alongside 100 works by outsider artists. We preferred the outsider art.
6. Where would you say you buy most of your work from: a studio, art fairs, exhibitions, auctions, or direct from artists?
We buy in galleries, auctions, from the artists and from ateliers. There are many good ateliers around the world. Some are connected to a clinic like the one in Neufvilles, I mentioned before. Others are run by social institutions like Herenplaats in Rotterdam. We bought from auctions like Christies in London and New York and the auction houses in Switzerland. We also exchange with other collectors in Europe. For example we were in the Czech Republic where we met a major collector. We exchanged about 20 works. Now he has Swiss and we have Czech and Slovak art works.
Johann Hauser, Woman, 1968. Photographer: Thomas Gerber, Burgdorf, Switzerland
7. Have you got any future plans for your collection?
We would like to have again a major exhibition of our collection, it would be completely different from the first one (nine years ago). We have many new and interesting artists that we would love to show. Our collection was shown first in the “Kunstmuseum Thurgau” in Ittingen. The museum published a catalogue, which was printed in German (Weltensammler), in English (Collecting Worlds) and also a French version (Collectionneur de Mondes). Benteli Verlag in Berne (Bümpliz) was the publisher. The collection went to the LaM in Villeneuve in France, to Germany in Erfurt in the Kunsthalle, then again to France in Les Sables d’Olonne in the Musée de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix and finally to Mänttä, Finland in the Serlachius Museum.
Alpo Koivumäki, Horse Virma, 2009. Photographer: Thomas Gerber, Burgdorf, Switzerland