Collection

The muse­um which was pri­ma­ri­ly the initia­ti­ve of the citi­zens of St. Moritz, fri­ends and devo­tees of Segantini’s art was aimed at pro­vi­ding a per­ma­nent place in which to exhi­bit the master’s works. Howe­ver, when it first ope­ned, the muse­um had to be con­tent with only exhi­bi­ting pain­tings that were on loan. The first attempts to purcha­se pain­tings of its own were under­ta­ken in 1911, when the neces­sa­ry funds to purcha­se the two side pic­tures of the Alpi­ne Tri­ptych were rai­sed by means of a public sub­scrip­ti­on. Sub­se­quent­ly, the muse­um also suc­cee­ded in acqui­ring the midd­le pic­tu­re from a pri­va­te owner in Paris, thus final­ly reu­ni­ting the three ori­gi­nal panels of this monu­men­tal pain­ting. This achie­ve­ment requi­red con­sidera­ble effort, and it was only thanks to the sup­port and assis­tance of the Socie­ty for the Segan­ti­ni Muse­um|, the muni­ci­pa­li­ty and tou­rist office of St. Moritz, and abo­ve all the Gott­fried Kel­ler Foun­da­ti­on that Segantini’s main work was final­ly secu­red for the muse­um. Sin­ce then, the magni­fi­cent tri­ptych, «La vita – La natu­ra – La mor­te» (Life – Natu­re – Death) has been the museum’s main attraction.

Over the fol­lo­wing years, the muse­um con­tin­ued to purcha­se signi­fi­cant works, eit­her at its own initia­ti­ve or with the assis­tance of the Gott­fried Kel­ler Foun­da­ti­on, the Swiss Con­fe­de­ra­ti­on, the muni­ci­pa­li­ty of St. Moritz or pri­va­te coll­ec­tors. Other pain­tings were acqui­red as gifts or loans.

In 2001, the port­fo­lio of works was aug­men­ted in an excep­tio­nal and unpar­al­le­led way; the nine magni­fi­cent pain­tings and three dra­wings owned by the Otto Fischbacher/Giovanni Segan­ti­ni Foun­da­ti­on came to St. Moritz as a per­ma­nent loan.

The coll­ec­tion, which in the mean­ti­me has grown to a respec­ta­ble size of 37 pain­tings, is sup­ple­men­ted by an impres­si­ve inven­to­ry of 26 dra­wings, which is une­qual­led in terms of both con­cen­tra­ti­on and qua­li­ty. With this out­stan­ding ensem­ble of major works, inclu­ding the famous “Ave Maria Crossing the Lake” and “Mid­day in the Alps”, the Segan­ti­ni Muse­um is home to the most com­pre­hen­si­ve and signi­fi­cant coll­ec­tion of works by one of the world’s gre­at mas­ters of Alpi­ne painting.