Rosengart Collection

The Rosengart Collection is a private art museum housed in a neoclassical former bank building on the edge of the old town. The collection was assembled over decades by the Lucerne art dealers Siegfried Rosengart and his daughter Angela, and it is one of the strongest private caches of early 20th-century European art in Switzerland.

The holdings are strong on Picasso — over 200 works spanning his full career — and Klee, with approximately 125 pieces. There is also a good selection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works: Cézanne, Monet, Matisse, and Miró among them. The lower floor is given over to a photographic archive of Picasso by David Douglas Duncan. For the scale of the collection, the museum feels intimate and unhurried.

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A story
Siegfried Rosengart became Picasso's Swiss dealer in the 1930s and maintained a friendship with the artist over decades. His daughter Angela Rosengart, also a dealer, continued the relationship and was photographed repeatedly by Picasso. The museum's lower floor contains a remarkable series of photographs by David Douglas Duncan showing Picasso in his studios and daily life — an intimate counterpoint to the paintings upstairs.