Gitti Hug on the Rothko She Still Regrets Missing — and the Basel Stops She Swears By
For Gitti Hug, the art market is not only a collecting field but also a legal one. The Zurich-based Swiss lawyer, who serves as president of the friends of the Kunsthaus Zürich, specializes in intellectual property law, including copyright and trademark issues, with a particular focus on the international art market. That combination of legal rigor and collector’s instinct shapes the way she buys, and the way she talks about the works she lives with.
Hug began collecting in the mid-1990s, and her first purchase set the tone. In 1994, she bought Christopher Wool’s “Bad Dog,” a 60 cm by 30 cm work, at auction for $4,500. She calls it a wonderful way to begin a collection. Her most recent acquisition is a drawing by Philip Guston, an artist she says she came to love over several years, with a decisive push from seeing the Guston exhibition at the Museé Picasso in Paris.
When she buys, Hug says instinct matters, but not at the expense of caution. She tends to decide quickly, yet when the price rises, she does her homework and carries out thorough due diligence before committing. That balance is familiar to many collectors navigating a market where conviction and discipline often have to coexist.
Her one enduring regret is a Mark Rothko she passed on about 30 years ago at a Christie’s auction in Zurich because it seemed too expensive at the time. She still thinks about it. If she could take any work from a museum, she would choose Rothko’s “No. 5 (Reds)” (1961) from Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie, drawn not only to the painting itself but to the intense emotional response it provokes in viewers.
Hug’s taste leans toward Abstract Expressionism, with Rothko, Guston, and Christopher Wool among the artists she names most readily. But her Basel advice is just as revealing as her collecting history. She recommends the Fondation Beyeler and the Kunsthalle Basel, and says a visit to the latter should end with Zürcher Geschnetzeltes at Restaurant Kunsthalle next door. For her, the city’s art life and its culinary rituals belong to the same experience — one that feels especially vivid during Art Basel.
