Collection

Since the 1970s, members of the Hilti family have been actively engaged in the collection of art. The systematic long-term development and growth of the collection with first-class works of art under the auspices of a foundation (Hilti Art Foundation) began in the early 1990s.

The collection of the Hilti Art Foundation currently contains some 200 paintings, sculptures, objects and photographs from the period of classical modernism to the present. After more than twenty years of dedicated collecting activity, Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism and Surrealism, along with Concrete Art and Zero, have emerged as clearly recognizable and increasingly important focal points. Individual artists such as Kirchner, Picasso, Beckmann and Giacometti or Fontana, Graubner, Knoebel, Scully and Struth are each represented with several works.

A characteristic trait of private collections is that they reflect the individual interests of the respective collectors, their highly personal approach to art. This also applies to the collection of the Hilti Art Foundation. Originating in a desire for beauty and aesthetic pleasure – which excludes ugliness, yet still allows for exploration of the abyss within the beautiful – the collection is marked by pronounced sensuous qualities, especially in the genre of painting. At the same time, however, it is guided by a conscious perception of the formal and conceptual changes in the art of the late nineteenth and the entire twentieth century. Through each individual work of art, each individual artist, the collection draws attention to an era encompassing almost one and a half centuries in which individuals question as never before the capacities and consequences of their own existence as well as of art itself and its possibilities for aesthetic expression.

The goal of the collection is to continually broaden and publicly disseminate the understanding of this epoch.