2010

An above-door piece from the series The Deeds of Scipio
This recent acquisition depicting Apollo the Sun God supplements one of the outstanding ensembles of the Toms Collection. It belongs to the large, thirty-nine-piece sequence of the series The Deeds of Scipio – illustrating the Punic Wars against Hannibal – commissioned in 1660 by the Marquis of Benavides. The Fondation already boasts three large historiated tapestries of this baroque rendering of The Deeds and Triumph of Scipio, one of the most famous series of the Renaissance. Don Luis Francisco de Benavides Carrillo de Toledo, the Marquis of Caracena and Governor General of the Spanish Netherlands from 1659 to 1664, owned no fewer than 141 tapestries. Although his Scipio set was made up of large pieces, the patron of the series had also ordered some smaller pieces to decorate spaces between windows and above doors.
 

2007 – 2008

Antique tapestries
The last Toms tapestry rejoins the collections.
Mr Toms purchased three pieces from the English series Children's Bacchanals on the London market in 1962 and exhibited two of them at the Château de Coinsins. The third was hung in the Monaco apartment owned by the Toms and thus became separated from the other two pieces as a consequence of Mrs Toms’ will. Thanks to the generosity of the beneficiary’s heirs, this piece has been given to the Fondation and has now been reunited with the collection of which it historically formed a part.

Contemporary textile art
The Foundation has acquired two works by Elsi Giauque, the most important Swiss artist of the 20th century in the field of textile art: two elements of Féministes (exhibited at the 8th Tapestry Biennale in Lausanne in 1977) and Colonne argent (1980). Elsi Giauque stamped the Biennales with her boldness, individuality, sensitivity and technical skill. As early as 1945 she was designing works that were imbued with transparency, made using free warp threads. Twenty years before the start of the new textile art, therefore, she invented a personal style that would only be recognised at the international level around 1960.

The Foundation has acquired Abakan 29 (1968) and Le Roux (1966-67) by the Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz. With sisal, Magdalena Abakanowicz discovered the means to create flexible works in three dimensions. She started with reliefs enlivened by slits and protrusions and then, in 1969, presented an “Abakan” at the International Tapestry Biennale in Lausanne that caused a sensation. “Abakans” are textile objects set in space which impress the viewer as a result of their strength, inventiveness and innovation. With more than thirty pieces, the Foundation has at its disposal the largest group of textile works by this internationally recognised artist.

From the heirs of the Swiss artist Marlise Staehelin the Foundation has received Elément noir et blanc (1972) and Colonne blanche (ca.1970). Marlise Staehelin created organic forms using the soumak technique. The thread is wrapped around the warp and, thanks to connecting fibres of flax, the fabric does not become distorted but remains flat. She abandoned the weft and was thus able to obtain three-dimensional effects and achieve very great malleability of the elements.

The Hungarian artist Marika Szàraz has offered the Foundation a mini-textile, Mini 14 (2004). The artist, based in Brussels since 1975, has developed on the high-warp loom a personal technique for which she coined a neologism – szama – based on her name. Her compositions are simple and rigorous, priority being given to the line.