Who is Jean Pigozzi?

International Tue 01-11-2011

Who is Jean Pigozzi?
By Osei G. Kofi | AfricanColours.com

This man is a patron for some of the best-selling names on the African contemporary art scene, and they include El Anatsui, Joël Andrianomearisoa, Willie Bester, Bruly Bouabré, Pasteur Bodo, Cherin Chérin, Soly Cissé, Samuel Fosso, Romuald Hazoumé, Seydou Keita, Bodys Kingelez, George Lilanga, Esther Mahlangu, Monsengwo Moke, Cheri Samba, Malick Sidibe, amd our own son of Kenyan soil, Richard Onyango.

Ladies and gentlemen, please meet Mr Jean Pigozzi, Harvard educated, Italo-French businessman and billionaire venture capitalist; all six foot four, barrel-chested, big-throated – but as gentle as grandma’s 16-year old cat.

Mr Pigozzi used to collect stamps, cars and houses, and he kept homes in London, Geneva, Los Angeles, Paris, Cap d’Antibes and Panama. His New York loft which sports some fine specimen of Basquiat, Cindy Sherman and Maurizio Cattelan is totally consumed by Africa, African art that is; paintings, sculptures and photography.

Osei Kofi, Jean Pigozzi & JeanPhilippe Akah, a Parisian gallerist, at Art Basel

Gallery Watatu's CEO Osei G Kofi with African Art collector Jean Pigozzi & JeanPhilippe Akah, a Parisian gallerist, at Art Basel

Pigozzi’s love affair with Africa began in 1989 in Paris when the state-owned Centre Pompidou mounted the Magiciens de la Terre exhibition, a seminal event that was the first serious jab by any reputed art establishment in Europe to offer to their public a view of non-European art that wasn’t of the exoticism of ethnographic images - masks, totem poles, blackened fetiches bristling with nails and broken glass.

The show wasn’t much of a success. The low turnout disappointed the curators led by Andre Magnin. In the closing days of the exhibition Pigozzi walked in with a friend. There is a French phrase for the encounter: coup de foudre! Meaning, Pigozzi was hit by a thunderbolt. He was so smitten by what he was seeing he wanted to buy half of the display, which, of course, wasn’t for sale. He decided to start his own African collection. He hired Magnin and a mutually rewarding professional relationship began. Within ten years the duo had acquired thousands of pieces of African art, now grouped under the Geneva-based Contemporary African Art Collection (CAAC).

Pigozzi’s criteria were that the artwork had to be “beautiful, powerful, interesting and original” and the artist must be resident in Africa. The last caveat didn’t endear him to many of our Diasporan artists, ensconced in their North American or European studios. Peu import, just imagine the amount of cash for daily bread, payment of school fees or hospital bills or dowries that Pigozzi has thus injected directly into Africa.

J. Pigozzi hosts African artists at his home in Cote d'Azur including Kenyan artist Richard Onyango (In jeans on foreground)

In 1991 the CAAC launched its travelling exhibition programme and showed the collection in Spain, Netherlands, Mexico, Germany, Japan, Italy and US. It later took part in the Africa Remix road show. In 15 years Pigozzi and Magnin organized more than 40 solo and 30 collective exhibitions for their artists. They lent artworks to more than 200 museums, foundations and art festivals, thereby helping to make their African artists known and celebrated across the world. No other private entity has contributed more, and so consistently, in the hoisting high of the banner of African contemporary.

“My objective is to demonstrate the quality and originality of Africa contemporary art, and that it needs to be accorded its rightful place in all the great modern museums of the world,” Pigozzi said on the eve of yet another show,“Arts of Africa”, at the Grimaldi Forum, Monaco, in 2005. As I write the corridors of UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva are festooned with stunning artworks on loan from Pigozzi’s collection and the Executive Director, Michel Sidibe, can’t believe his luck.

Now, here comes an incongruity. A tireless globetrotter, Mr Pigozzi is yet to set foot in Africa. The other day at the Basel art fair I pressed him on this fact – a lover of all things African who has never been to Africa. He mumbled, smiled expansively and changed the subject to an embarrassing faux pas I once made, or my sub-editor did. In a piece I wrote some years back he’d been referred to as “Michel” Pigozzi (a French actor).

Well, I have put Mr Pigozzi on notice; that I will bring him to Kenya to taste the bubbling East African art scene first hand. And that, six foot four or not, if I have to gag and tie him up into a Kenya Airways seat, I will.

Art Africa Investment | Art Columnist | MD & Partner, Gallery Watatu-Nairobi, Kenya

Posted By: Diana Achieng

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