Future Present. The Collection of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation

When the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation published its last catalogue of the collection in 1991, there were 322 entries in the list of works. Today the collection comprises over 1,000 works and reads like a cross-section of the history of art and artistic thinking in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

On the occasion of the exhibition FUTURE PRESENT the new catalogue Future Present: The Collection of the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation takes stock of the present and provides a comprehensive insight into this vast treasure trove of artistic responses to the world since the 1920s.

The catalogue of the collection details paintings, sculptures, drawings, installations, photographs and video works owned by the Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation. The illustrated list of works is preceded by over eighty descriptions of works and biographies of all the artists represented in the collection. A conversation between the art historian Catherine Hürzeler and the President of the Foundation, Maja Oeri, adds a personal dimension to the Foundation’s commitment to contemporary art. Ralph Ubl, Professor of Modern Art at the University of Basel, portrays the Foundation’s collecting activities against an art-historical backdrop. Finally, this richly illustrated publication is rounded off with useful pointers to further reading.