|Reſlections| Above: Before Performance (1981) by late Estonian artist Anu Põder, whose work will be the subject of a exhibition at Muzeum Susch next year; top: inside James Turrell’s Skyspace Piz Utèr (2005) beside Hotel Castell in Zuoz Opposite page, from top: Roman Signer’s Wasserfenster (2011), which frames views of Piz Mezzaun through a curtain of water on the grounds of Hotel Castell; an undated painting depicting a horse race in St Moritz by local painter Peter Robert Berry II Segantini Museum (segantini-museum.ch) in St Moritz, which commemorates the Italian neo-impressionist painter of Alpine landscapes Giovanni Segantini, another artist who found inspiration in the Engadin and settled in Maloja. If monumental mountainscapes are your passion, St Moritz also has the Berry Museum (berrymuseum. com), which is dedicated to Segantini’s friend and contemporary Peter Robert Berry II. Born in the village, he trained as a doctor, married into the family of Johannes Badrutt, the de facto inventor of winter-sports tourism and proprietor of the resort’s most famous palace hotel (also incidentally home to Hauser & Wirth’s gallery), and was eventually inspired to take up painting by Giovanni Giacometti, another native of the Engadin, and father of the more famous Alberto Giacometti. There may not be a conventional museum of the Giacomettis’ work here, but the Pensiun Aldier ( aldier.ch), a chalet hotel in the village of Sent, exhibits 200 or so works (mostly graphic though there are a few bronzes) by Alberto, his brother Diego and their friend, the photographer Ernst Scheidegger (hence the name Al-di-er), amassed by the collector and hotelier Carlos Gross. Indeed, several hotels in the valley are rich repositories of art. Just as Richter gifted two small paintings to the Waldhaus, so Julian Schnabel has favoured Villa Flor ( villaflor.ch) with a number of canvases, an unassuming but enchanting seven-room hotel in S-chanf, whose proprietor, Ladina Florineth, reportedly taught him to ski (she is a qualified ski instructor). And the artist, collector and entrepreneur Ruedi Bechtler has filled Castell (hotelcastell.ch) in Zuoz with works by the likes of Carsten Höller, Martin Kippenberger, Gabriel Orozco, Pipilotti Rist, David Shrigley, Lawrence Weiner, Erwin Wurm and Fischli/Weiss. It even has a James Turrell Skyspace on its grounds. Twenty minutes from St Moritz, on the branch of the picture-book Rhaetian Railway that connects most of the villages mentioned here, Zuoz is also the home of the usually starry Engadin Art Talks (engadin-art-talks. ch), held over the last weekend of January. (The 2024 programme was yet to be announced at the time of writing, but the last edition’s line-up of speakers included Ai Weiwei, Camille Henrot, Ernesto Neto and Uli Sigg.) The next stop, La Punt-Chamues-ch, is worth alighting at, too, not least for a meal at Krone – Säumerei am Inn (krone-lapunt.ch), an outstanding Michelinstarred restaurant with comparatively inexpensive rooms, which opened last year and belongs to the investor and art collector Beat Curti. Stay or dine here, and you’ll encounter a variety of works from his collection, notably those by the Swiss artist Not Vital, who was also born in Sent and PHOTOS FROM TOP: GABRIELA ACKLIN, COURTESY THE ARTIST AND ART MUSEUM OF ESTONIA 82 CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
