ART IN FOCUS A PRIVATE PASSION For decades, Heidi Goëss-Horten was one of Europe’s leading collectors, though few beyond her inner circle knew the scale of her ambition. She bought modern and contemporary works, largely from established masters, starting in the 1970s, and made her biggest splash at a single London auction week in the mid-1990s where she spent more than $20 million on pictures by a diverse range of artists that included Francis Bacon, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Klee. Goëss-Horten first revealed the startling breadth and quality of her collection at a 2018 exhibition held by the Leopold Museum in Vienna, where critics and the public were bowled over by the 170 works on display – the show became the museum’s most-visited exhibition in its history. Inspired by this success, the next year she purchased a building in the Austrian capital across the street from the Albertina, one of Europe’s leading art museums, and integrated a strikingly contemporary 1,500sq m exhibition space behind a historic façade. All white walls and floating staircases, designed by local architecture firm ENTERprise, the space puts the focus firmly on the collection – which at more than 700 pieces will give director Agnes Husslein-Arco plenty of scope for modulation (the opening exhibition, OPEN, featured just 50 works). The collection is strong on bright, colourful canvases from across the 20th century, though there are some earlier and later pieces as well, along with some notable sculptures. Picasso, Baselitz, Schiele, Lichtenstein, Chagall, Fontana – all are well represented and demonstrate a keen eye that makes the Horten Collection a mustvisit for art aficionados passing through the Austrian capital. A true passion project, the museum was opened in June of this year, and a few days later Goëss-Horten, aged 81, passed away. hortencollection.com FACING PAGE Heidi Goëss-Horten with her beloved dog and Francis Bacon’s Study for a Portrait of John Edwards, 1985 94 NetJets
