Uli Sigg: How I built the world’s biggest collection of Chinese contemporary art | CNN

Courtesy of the artist and West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

Swiss collector Uli Sigg, has spent the last few decades acquiring the world's largest collection of Chinese contemporary art. His collection includes works from Ai Weiwei, Cao Fei, Zhang Xiaogang, Liu Wei, Wang Guangle, and other famous Chinese artists. This piece, "To Add One Meter to an Anonymous Mountain" (1995) is by Zhang Huan.

Courtesy of the artist and West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

His collection includes works from Ai Weiwei, Cao Fei, Zhang Xiaogang, Liu Wei, Wang Guangle, and other famous Chinese artists.

In 2012, Sigg donated 1,510 Chinese contemporary works of art to M+, Hong Kong's new museum for visual culture, scheduled to open in 2019. Of the collection Sigg says: "The M+ Sigg Collection invites a critical reflection on the short history of contemporary art in China and cultivates lucid insights into Chinese society in a historical period that in retrospect will be considered very important."

Courtesy of the artist and West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

80 of these artworks feature at a new exhibition, M+ Sigg exhibit: "Four Decades of Chinese Contemporary Art" in Hong Kong. Dr. Pi Li, Sigg Senior Curator of Visual Arts at M+ says: "Chinese artists have constantly navigated between domestic and global artistic, social and political tensions in their pursuit of artistic freedom." The exhibition, he explains, "traces and illustrates the robust output of Chinese art through historical artistic movements from the late 1970s to present day, presenting a fascinating story of the development of Chinese contemporary art."

Courtesy of the artist and West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

Organized into three chapters, works are featured from the time periods: 1974 to 1989, 1990 to 1999 and 2000 to the present.

The first chapter introduces work from 1974 to 1989 -- a time of underground artistic experimentation from artists of the No Name Group and Stars Group.

Courtesy of the artist and West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

The section shows how artists exercised self-expression and autonomous thinking. Artists during this time, demonstrated critical attitudes towards the political environment.

Courtesy of the artist and West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

The second chapter features work produced between 1990-1999, and artistic practices during the post-Cold War era in China. Artists started to express cultural anxiety and began to explore more radical themes and techniques.

Courtesy of the artist and West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

During this time period, the government began to encourage urbanization and consumerism, and Chinese artists began to create their own identity within the art world and on the international scale.

Courtesy of the artist and West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

The final chapter covers work from the year 2000 to present day. One of its focuses is artistic interest in the 2008 Beijing Olympics, as artists responded to rapid changes to their environment.

Editor’s Note: A former Swiss ambassador to China, Uli Sigg is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential collectors of Chinese contemporary art. The opinions expressed here are solely his.

CNN —

It was business, not art, that first brought me to China. As an employee of the Swiss company Schindler Elevators I arrived in Beijing in the late 70s, to establish what would later become the very first joint venture between China and the outside world.

This was the beginning of Deng Xiaoping’s open door policy, though the country itself was still very much socialist. The death of Mao had occurred only recently and there was a feeling of turbulence and disorientation. Changes were happening everywhere, people – and artists in particular – wanted to have their voices heard.

Early days of Chinese Contemporary Art

I had always been very interested in contemporary art – and it seemed very natural for me at the time to begin exploring the art scene in China. Unfortunately, what I saw back then did not excite me.

Chinese artists had only just begun to free themselves from the forced constraints of socialist realism.

iMAGE28/Courtesy of the artist and West Kowloon Cultural District Authority

Sigg has collected four decades of Chinese contemporary art.

They had been cut off entirely from the global mainstream and the major art movements of the 20th century. I was looking at the scene with a Western eye, accustomed to the cutting most edge of contemporary art. The Chinese, meanwhile, were playing catch-up.

Throughout much of the late 1970s and early 1980s, Chinese art appeared – on the surface at least – as quite derivative, a mere imitation of more obvious Western styles. I followed the scene, treading carefully, so as not to put my company or the artists themselves at risk, but did not begin seriously collecting until much later, once Chinese artists had found their own language.

Over the years that language evolved and changed. In the late 80s – and particularly after Tiananmen – contemporary art took on an increasingly political edge. Artists made art against the system, against a repressive system and political art dominated. This was followed by a more Cynical Realism – or pop art.

Today, Chinese art production has caught up with global trends. Most artists are able to travel and the scene no longer stands in isolation. Its influences are global. Having watched Chinese art develop closely, I realized that not a single institution, or any known individuals, had begun seriously collecting. Those that did buy pieces did so randomly.

A systematic approach

So I decided to do what a national institution ought to do but never did: To collect Chinese contemporary art in a systematic way, from the late 1970s onwards, mirroring Chinese art production in its width and depth from its very beginnings.

At its height, my collection consisted of around 2,300 works – ranging from important revolutionary paintings to modern day abstracts.

I must have met close to 2,000 artists over the years. I nearly always purchased directly from the artists themselves, due – at least initially – out of sheer necessity: there was no functioning galleries or dealers as there are today.

In 1997, art catalogs did not exist and exhibitions were still largely underground events, so in order to get a better overview of the country’s art scene, I created the Chinese Contemporary Art Award (CCAA), the first ever award of its type to be held in China.

courtesy uli sigg

Swiss art collector, Uli Sigg

This also allowed me to promote Chinese art abroad, to the CCAA jury members who were the gatekeepers of the big international venues. Later I added an art critic award.

It represented the largest and most comprehensive collection of Chinese contemporary art in the world. In 2012, I donated 1,453 pieces and sold a further 47 pieces to M+ Museum in Hong Kong. This combined total of 1,500 works positions M+ as the world’s number one museum for Chinese contemporary art.

While people may see me as a collector who put together the most significant collection of Chinese contemporary art in the world, I prefer to view myself a researcher of China and of Chinese contemporary art who just happened to buy some of the results of his research.

The M+ Sigg Collection: Four Decades of Chinese Contemporary Art exhibition is in Hong Kong from Feb 23 to April 5. Other works from the M+ Sigg collection are currently featured in Chinese Whispers, a joint exhibition in in Bern. “The Chinese lives of Uli Sigg” – a film about Uli Sigg and his collection will release later in 2016.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author.