In 1989 jean pigozzi saw a show in Paris: Magiciens de la terre. It had a profound effect on him. Before this show, he had no idea that so much amazing contemporary art was being made in Africa. After the show, when he met Andre Magnin (one of the curators of the show), he decided to collect mainly contemporary African art. From this meeting, the Contemporary African Art Collection was born. Based in Geneva, it is a passionate personal adventure that made its mark bymeans of careful and unbiased choices.

Mart Engelen: You have been described as the biggest collector of African art. Looking back on the past 20 years, how would you characterize your activities?
Jean Pigozzi: It is not African art but contemporary African art. That is a big, big difference. If you look at traditional art, like in the Barbier–Mueller collection in Geneva, that is not what I collect. What I collect has been made in the last 20–25 years. People mix things up. They think what I collect is tribal art or what you can buy at the airport in Nairobi, which is ‘artisanal’. I collect paintings, photographs, sculptures, drawings and forms of conceptual art. Art that is made by living Africans – some of them unfortunately already dead – who are black and who live in Africa. This art is comparable to the art that is produced today in Berlin, New York and London. Of course it has a connection with traditional art because it has it’s roots in tradition. Also Picasso has roots in tradition, in the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci for example.
ME: Do you invest a lot in emerging artists?
JP: Oh yes, every year I add one or two young ones. I am always interested in looking at the work of new
artists.
ME: Do you feel a sense of personal responsibility towards artists whose work you collect and towards art in general?
JP: I feel a certain responsibility, especially to African artists. Because of the hard work by Andre Magnin and myself over the last 22 years, a lot of them are now known around the world. We have done more than a hundred shows and we also publish catalogues. If it had not been for us, most artists would still be in their local community. As for my responsibility towards art: I have never considered collecting art as a business or as some kind of speculation. I am just an obsessive collector. I have collected and I have been very open about lending my pieces to museums and institutions. I think it is very strange to see collectors who keep their art in a safe or warehouse and never show it to the public. Usually I am happy when a serious institution wants to lend my pictures. When I started collecting people used to say: “You are nuts, what you are collecting is useless”. They told me the only interesting African art is tribal, pre–1900. “Everything you collect now is crap for tourists”. So they did not really understand what I was doing which was fine with me. And I just kept on doing it. Now, the Tate and the Guggenheim in Bilbao and many other institutions are doing shows with my collection. So this ‘crap’ has turned out to be quite important.
ME: Do you think contemporary African art is taken seriously enough by the art world after all these years?
JP: Well, it is coming. I would say in the last three years it has become very important. The Tate did some shows and I have been speaking to other museums too. I really feel that they are waking up. But neither Beaubourg, nor the Metropolitan nor the moma have a curator for contemporary African art. That’s interesting, because they do have curators for Asian and South-African art. They have completely passed over Africa which is – as we all know – the cradle of our civilisation. Now all these museums feel that they have made a big mistake. In the next two to three years there will be an explosion. Let me tell you something interesting: art is always connected to the price of art in business. If you look at Chinese art, one of the reasons the price of Chinese art has exploded in the last five years is that a lot of Chinese people have been collecting their own art. That is not happening in Africa. When a man in Africa becomes rich, he usually builds a big house. He buys a Mercedes and a golden Rolex, but he does not buy art. Or maybe he will buy some tribal art. In China there are contemporary paintings that will sell for four to five million dollars. This could also happen to Africa.
ME: So you think African art is going to explode in the next two or three years?
JP: Look, people always want something new. I have the feeling people have seen Chinese art, they are slowly discovering Indian art and then there will be African art, then Brazilian art. It is like fashion, you know? It is the same with furniture. Of French furniture from the fifties people said: “What is this horrible stuff?” Now they are going crazy and pay a lot of money for a chair from that period. I was in school and sat on one of those chairs and I can tell you: I was not impressed by it. By the way, this African art is great art, it is not bad stuff. Peole will finally open their eyes. The problem with Africa is when people think of Africa they think of corruption, aids, war and maybe a bit of music, but you definitely don’t think of paintings, drawings or photographs. Still I am pretty sure that it will happen.
ME: Do you think galleries like Gagosian are seriously starting to invest in contemporary African art ?
JP: The problem is that it’s very difficult to collect. It’s much more easy to go and buy a painting in the studio of for instance Damien Hirst. His studio is an hour away from London and if you are really rich you can take a helicopter to get there. But to go and see an artist’s studio in Kinshasa or Ivory Coast, that is a long flight. You arrive and have absolutely no idea what’s happening. You will never find the place. Physically it is incredibly complicated. Once you manage to buy the painting and try to send it back, it gets suddenly blocked at customs. You need an immense patience. For a lot of galleries it is a lot easier to see the airconditioned office or studio of an artist where the assistants with white gloves serve you green tea. That is the reason why very few people have put together a serious collection.
ME: What do you enjoy more, the hunt or the pleasure of owning the artworks?
JP: Especially the discovering is interesting. You see one or two little paintings of some artist, then you start working with him and five years later you discover this is really a great artist or this guy is no good. Sometimes you are rewarded and sometimes you make a mistake.
ME: Being a photographer yourself, which photographer do you admire most?
JP: Robert Frank by far. He took pictures in the fifties and also later that were completely revolutionary. I also like Richard Avedon, Seydou Keïta, Irving Penn, Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton. They are all great photographers in their own field. The problem with photography now is that even your dog can take a picture. It has become so easy. Still there is an ocean of difference between a good and a great picture. Taking a great picture is not so easy…
ME: What do you look for when you are buying a work of art?
JP: I always look for something I have never seen before. The most interesting thing in life is creation. Ninetynine percent or more of the people in this world is not creative. I am interested in people where you can see their imagination. So you feel: now that is an interesting image, or color, or shape. It will not look like a bad Picasso or Monet. When Damien Hirst put the shark in a tank, that was really a new idea. Also, ninetynine percent of art is completely boring.
ME: Sometimes you hear statements like ‘painting is dead and has been dead for the last forty years’. What forms of art do you prefer at this moment?
JP: I don’t care. It is like you would say: writing is finished because we invented radio and television. Painting is absolutely there and will be for much longer. I buy paintings, photographs, sculptures. I have a slight problem with videos – I love them – but I keep losing the disks. If not, I like videos too.
ME: What was the first thing you started to collect in your life?
JP: Hm… As a child I collected anything, from pebbles on the beach to small bottles of whisky – you know, the ones you get on the plane? Which is strange because I don’t drink. When I was very young, I had a bad collection of stamps. I have been collecting all my life. Now I have to limit myself.
ME: Where do you keep your collection?
JP: A lot is stashed in warehouses. A real collector is somebody who buys much more than he can put on his wall. When somebody says he has only paintings on his wall and nothing in a warehouse, then he is not a real collector. He does not have the disease. He is not included in the club of collectors. If you are an alcoholic, you can go to AA. But I have not seen a place that is called Collectors Anonymous. It is a disease till your
last living day.
ME: Don’t you wish to have your own museum one day?
JP: Yes, I would love that. If my name were Bill Gates, I would certainly have one. A museum is incredibly expensive. To build it would cost maybe ten million dollars. To run it would cost an extra two or three million, every year! In this lovely economical crisis, I don’t really know. But I am obsessed with finding a home for my collection. It would be sad to have spent the last 22 years of my life collecting and then one day I am going to die from a heart attack and somebody of Sotheby’s will come and disperse this work in a bad sales. So if anybody has some great ideas, I am open for it.