Hardly any time went by between the creation of works by artists like Picasso, Braque, and Derain and their acquisition by Hermann Rupf, who was personally involved with these artists at the beginning of their careers.
- The Rupfs were close friends with artists like Vasily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, who gave Hermann and Margrit Rupf dedicated works on important occasions like birthdays and Christmas.
- Even today, the Rupf Foundation strives to expand the collection with the most recent contemporary art without losing sight of the core of the art collection that the couple amassed over their lifetime.
- This is the first time that this collection, consisting of an extensive selection of works rendered between 1907 and 2016, is travelling to Spain.
The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is presenting The Collection of Hermann and Margrit Rupf. This exhibition brings together 70 works by key artists in the history of art during the first half of the 20th century, including  Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Paul Klee, and Vasily Kandinsky, in dialogue with works by contemporary artists dating from the second half of the 20th century until today. In 1963, one year after the death of Hermann Rupf, the Foundation managed to purchase Henri Laurens’s  1918 work Fruit Bowl and Pipe (Compotier  et pipe) to complete its already extensive group of sculptures and works on paper by this artist. In 1964, a relief by Hans Arp was purchased (Gallery 307).
In the 1990’s, the existing collection was expanded with works by American artists as Donald Judd (Gallery 307), Joseph Kosuth, Brice Marden, Ad Reinhard, and James Turrell, and European artists as Piero Manzoni (Gallery 307), Enrico Castellani (Gallery 307), Lucio Fontana (Gallery 307), and Christian Megert (Gallery 307), among others. A group of works representing Minimalism and the ZERO Movement was also acquired, which today remains a fascinating continuation of the Rupfs’ original collection, since in the early days of their collecting we can see an undeniable preference for the tradition of constructivist and conceptual art.
The creation of the Rupf Foundation guaranteed that the collection would be conserved, consolidated and expanded. The Foundation still focuses on the most recent contemporary art without losing sight of the core of the collection, comprised of the wonderful works of art gathered by Rupf. This exhibition reveals the coherence and evolution of the Collection of Hermann and Margrit Rupf as a reflection of the art of their day.
