Koetser .:. Foundation

Klemm, Christian,
The paintings of The Betty and David M Koetser Foundation. Doornspijk: Davaco, 1989. 166 Seiten mit Abbildungen. Leinen mit Schutzumschlag. 4to. 250 x 215 mm. 980 g

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Bestell-Nr.159147 | ISBN: 90-70288-51-6

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Koetser | Malerei | Kunstsammlung | Sammlungskatalog

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Foreword
David Maurits Koetser is one of those men whom it is impossible to forget. Our meeting happened quite by chance. Having some time to fill between appointments, I was strolling through Zurich towards Paradeplatz looking at this and that in the shop windows. Something caught my eye. It was a picture - not very big but pretty and to all appearances very old. I went in. It was a spacious gallery. Thus I came to know the man. On my entering he observed me with a scarcely perceptible critical glance. It was one of those looks that I later came to admire when concerned with a painting. He stood before me, light of build, not very tall, and already slightly stooped. He answered my questions carefully and sparing with his words, speaking a cultivated German with just a hint of a foreign accent. Showing me round the gallery I became aware of the magic of the place. Where did it come from? From the man, or from his pictures? Long afterwards I came to understand that this sensation derived from both the paintings and the man; the one couldn't exist without the other. David M. Koetser and his paintings: it was a passion.
Extremely sensitive, whenever he sold a good painting he would literally suffer. I have had the good fortune to share some of his thoughts and see his connoisseurship in action around the world's galleries and sale rooms. He became a friend. Extremely individual and at times unpredictable, he was a modest man, though not when it came to pictures where he was not afraid to speak his mind. He was possessed by beauty, by the imagination of painters: their `palette' and art, by Italian, Netherlandish and Spanish history and by the open sky of his native Holland: all of this reflected again and again in so many of his pictures. Throughout the vicissitudes of his life he has been accompanied by his wife Betty whom he utterly adores.
Betty and David Maurits Koetser have presented their paintings to our city. By this generosity they constitute a veritable pillar of Zurich's Kunsthaus. The thanks of the present and future generations of art lovers will consist in the happy exchange between the donors and the viewer.
Ferdinand J. Knecht

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