How Hauser & Wirth built a global empire

The couple are also famous for their differing approaches. Iwan, 50, is the exuberant, enthusiastic, party-loving virtuoso salesman. Manuela, 56, is quieter, the one who provides the calm structure that allows the wildness to thrive. ‘I am always a little bit more sceptical,’ she says.

Manuela was ‘very sceptical’ about Iwan when they first met. She was in her mid-20s and working as a teacher when her mother, Ursula Hauser, a gallerist who also ran her late husband’s retail business, started hanging out with an 18-year-old boy from the neighbouring village. The boy in question was Iwan, who’d opened his first gallery aged 16 and was now advising Ursula on how to expand her collection. It was an unlikely partnership, but their combined enthusiasm for art and collecting was irresistible. ‘I saw this knowledge and passion and I felt I wanted to be part of the journey,’ says Manuela.

Art and life collided in 1996 when Manuela and Iwan married, four years after the first Hauser & Wirth gallery opened in Zurich. Ever since then the expansion of the business has been marked by ambition and fearlessness. This was made possible, initially, by Ursula’s fortune. ‘That was very helpful at the beginning,’ says Manuela. ‘But I think we have been profitable since the second or third year,’ adds Iwan. ‘We have been in the right place with the right ideas and the right artists in an unprecedented boom for contemporary art, and that is what paid for it.’

In 2003 Hauser & Wirth opened in London, two years later the couple moved from Zurich to Holland Park with their three children (and another on the way). But although Iwan and Manuela say they ‘immediately felt part of the community and cultural landscape’, they soon sought a rural weekend retreat. They fell for Horsley Farm ‘within 10 minutes’ and moved their family to Somerset four years later. Although until March of this year Iwan in particular spent at least half of his time on the move. ‘I was on a plane twice a week. It was part of our vision, to go to most openings. I have been travelling since I was 16. It was amazing to finally wake up every morning and be in the same bed.’

Iwan and Manuela may have been ‘grounded’ in Somerset with their children for the past six months, cooking together in the evenings and watching Japanese horror films chosen by their son David in their new cinema barn, but they have been as industrious as ever. The New York gallery was meant to open in May with what Iwan calls an ‘ambitious extravaganza’ that had been two years in the conceiving stage, but that was cancelled in the wake the of Covid-19 pandemic, along with 40 other shows. ‘But we did 30 online,’ says Manuela. The response of the team to the limitations imposed by the pandemic has been aided by ArtLab, the digital research division launched this year to develop new technologies for the creation, curation and display of art. Fortuitously, last year the ArtLab team did a full scan of the Hauser & Wirth booth at Frieze. ‘This is a gift,’ says Iwan, ‘because we are able to create a virtual reality experience of the booth for this year. And not just the walls — the tent, everything. It is going to be unbelievable.’

Iwan admits that he loves ‘making money. But I also love making it in a way that means we can give back. It’s an exchange, we enjoy more if we share.’ In New York there was a recent fundraiser — Artists for New York — with more than 100 artists donating works, and proceeds going to 14 non-profit visual arts institutions in the city. The couple also facilitated online sales of an edition by Jenny Holzer to raise money for the World Health Organisation’s Covid response fund and Art for Acres, and an edition by Simone Leigh was sold, raising money for Color of Change charity.

The Wirths have been surprised at how quickly buyers have adapted to online art sales. One hundred Holzer prints sold out in 30 minutes (‘I was like, “Wait, I want five copies for us and the children!”’ says Iwan). So although there are no private views and the international art fair jamboree has, for now, come to a halt, the business of creating and selling art continues. ‘People feel particularly connected to work that was made in this moment,’ says Iwan. As such Hauser & Wirth’s autumn schedule features pieces created as a response to the pandemic, such as an online exhibition of Mark Bradford’s Quarantine Paintings.

This moment has also seen a long-overdue scrutiny of privilege and access, a conversation that Iwan and Manuela welcome. ‘It’s a big learning curve. The industry has been a bubble. We are trying to open it up,’ says Iwan. ‘Being from Switzerland, we are in a super-bubble, growing up super-privileged. It is important for us to be nimble, to listen and learn… We are selling a luxury product and that is wonderful and I love it, but no artist is interested in doing this in isolation.’

Hauser & Wirth represents a large proportion of female and Bame artists, an approach ingrained into the organisation from its inception. Ursula, who Iwan describes as the firm’s ‘moral compass’, has always championed female artists, owning an important private collection that showcases works by artists such as Eva Hesse and Louise Bourgeois. ‘We show more women artists than any other gallery and we show more people of colour,’ says Iwan. ‘The diversity really came with America. We started to work with African-American artists because they were incredible artists.’

Iwan and Manuela own works by Simone Leigh and Mark Bradford, among others, but the focus of their personal collections is not art. ‘There is a conflict of interest. When we have a show, we always know exactly what we want, but the client has to come first,’ says Iwan. Instead Iwan collects iron-age axe heads and stamps; it is Manuela, he says, who is the ‘obsessive collector. She has things arriving every week, every hour!’ Manuela collects cookbooks, textiles and shells. There are more than 12,000 objects on display at their hotel in Scotland, the Fife Arms, including some artworks from the pair’s own collection.

‘We both need projects,’ says Manuela. ‘I would get depressed otherwise,’ adds Iwan. It is this positive energy that fuels Hauser & Wirth’s relentless expansion in even the bleakest of economic times. ‘There is an expression in German: “Where you stand, you dig,”’ says Iwan. It is why a simple gallery was never going to be enough, why there were always going to be publishing ventures, educational programmes, architectural and conservation projects, restaurants and hotels; and it is why we are lucky to have them.