Manuela: Mami, you’re technically a child of war.

Ursula: Yes, I was born one month before the war started. My father had to leave my mother and me behind because he was sent to the front. Of course, the circumstances were miserable: we really struggled with having enough food and staying warm. Especially during winter, the lack of heating was a big issue. So, in a way, I learned from a very early age that it’s possible to live very frugally. I was a fighter. As a six-month-old baby, I suffered from pneumonia and was on the verge of dying because there was no penicillin at that time. But I made it. I obviously fought.

Manuela: A tough woman, as you still very much are.

Ursula: Yes, exactly. That then happened two more times throughout my life. I fought my way through again and again. Now, I have reached an old age. Apparently, I’m still lively enough to experience a lot of new things, though. All the fighting hasn’t done me any harm, either.

The lesson I have learned from all this is that you can get by with limited or even sparse amounts of food. But you need love; you need affection. That is very important. To thrive, you need not just food and warmth.

Manuela: At the age of 34, you became a young and attractive widow. You very quickly had to manage your life on your own with three small children, aged ten, eight, and five. I'm interested in hearing about your experiences during this period. You joined the family company and basically had to manage a lot of things on your own, right?

Ursula: Above all, I had to assert myself against a world of men.

They were all very technical people, including my brother and my father. I was actually the only woman in this company. Before that, I had already worked part-time as a secretary, and that was enough. But then the company got bigger, and I had to work full-time, which wasn't really possible with three small children. I don't really know how, but I just did it.

Ursula: There were 24 hours in a day, and the nights were short because there were still chores at home that needed to be done at the end of each day. The children got homework from school which they needed help with, too. There was just so much to do, all of which I just had to do on my own.

Manuela: You just functioned, right?

Ursula: Yes, functioning on auto-pilot more or less. In retrospect, you could say that not everything worked out. But in the moment, you just do what is needed, what feels right. It is easy to question everything in hindsight. It was a hard time. It wasn’t easy, making so many decisions on my own. Whether it was raising the children or all the financial matters, I simply had to decide for myself. 

Although I had people I could talk to, I still felt that I had to assert myself. I had to be able to stand up for myself, to understand and to master all the tasks on my own. And in the end, it worked. That's why I'm perhaps a more difficult partner for new partners nowadays, because I always want to do everything myself. In a way, that's the downside of becoming so independent and responsible for everything at an early age.

Inherited Skills: Crafting Through Generations

Ursula: I always saved one afternoon per week for myself back then.

Manuela: Thursdays, right?

Ursula: Yes, Thursdays. That was the day I could make appointments like going to the hairdresser or just catching up with friends.

Manuela: And you took dancing classes!

Ursula: Thursday afternoons were holy to me because I could plan and do whatever I wanted without the children. Of course, I used this time to do some crafts. I enjoyed knitting and sewing for you. I needed this time to myself and I took the time for it. It may have come at the expense of reading or literature in general. But I did that in bed in the evenings, right up until I closed my eyes. I would have liked to have done more reading, but that fell off the plate a bit.

Manuela: Your mother was a seamstress, right?

Ursula: Yes, she was.

Manuela: That probably also influenced you.

Ursula: Yes, certainly. Back then, there weren’t any boutiques or clothing stores. The high society ladies had dresses custom-made for special occasions. My mother was a seamstress and had a loyal clientele thanks to having learned her craft well. She had a fantastic eye for style and was able to provide customers with good suggestions. At home, she had many collections of brochures from fabric suppliers, and that influenced me greatly as a child. I was allowed to play with these pattern books.

She used any leftover fabrics to make costumes or dresses. I was even allowed to make something myself with these, too. I once even sewed my first bikini out of these leftover fabrics. I also made a tie, belt, and a hairband.

I sewed a lot for myself because I wanted my clothes to be unique.

In St. Gallen, we had these textile factories, the embroidery factories, some of which still exist today and are well known, like Akris, Forster, Willi, or Kreier. They often merged together, and you could buy their sample coupons there.

I often found beautiful materials there. With little effort, I was able to sew a cocktail dress or an evening dress because the material itself was already very special.

Manuela: That’s how my siblings and I grew up: we first watched Grandma sewing, and then saw how you were sewing, crocheting, and knitting. You also taught us how to practice these handicrafts ourselves. This strengthened my career aspirations, and I then went on to study to become a craft and home economics teacher.

Manuela: It is an art, to create something with your own hands.

Ursula: Yes. And that also means that I was already collecting back then. But a different way of collecting: not art pieces, but buttons, ribbons, or beautiful paper.

Investing in Art, Investing in People

Manuela: When did you decide that the work you were doing in the company didn’t fulfil you anymore and that you wanted to take on a new path?

Ursula: It began with the small gallery in Flawil, which I brought to life in the abandoned rooms of the old textile factory.

At the time, you were still studying and helped me out. Our opening hours were only on the weekend, and we sought contact with both artists and art lovers alike. Later on, we also were in contact with collectors who were local, just like the artists. This enabled me to visit other galleries again and again. At the time, these were galleries in St. Gallen or in Zurich. Among other things, I also noticed a small gallery in our region run by a 17 or 18-year-old young man, Iwan Wirth. We occasionally visited each other.

Technically, he was a competitor, but his program was also completely different to mine.

Manuela: Yes.

Ursula: But he came back to visit us anyway. I didn’t understand his intentions back then. I only realised those much later. But we started working together later on because he said: "You're doing something half-hearted, I'm doing something half-hearted, why don't we do something whole and go to the city of Zurich?" 

He was going to start his studies in Zurich and had the capacity to manage the locations and artists. But that then led to a financial question. A young man doesn’t get bank loans easily, so I was the potential bank for him. And that was probably the young man’s intention, even if it was entirely unconscious. Or maybe there was a connection between us. We liked each other.

Manuela: That worked out really well! Then, one after the other, there were more and more deals, I remember. You decided to trust this man and invest in this young man, technically.

Ursula: Yes, and he was already special back then. He had a lot of visions, perhaps sometimes far too ambitious, but he could always be brought back down to earth. As it turned out, he was on the right path back then. When I looked around at other young people his age, he was simply unique. He pursued his visions with diligence and perseverance. He wasn’t just a mayfly with crazy ideas in his head. He presented precise projects to me that convinced me. 

So, I thought: Why not? You have to take risks in life. Otherwise, you can’t win.

Why shouldn’t I take the risk with this young man, support him, and make a contribution so he can follow his dreams?

Manuela: To invest in him.

Ursula: And we really got to know a lot of good people together.

Manuela: When you started working with Iwan in Zurich, I had been working as a handicrafts and home economics teacher for six years, and I was somehow attracted to working in this art world. I started working part-time in the gallery as Iwan’s assistant and secretary. I then quickly realised that it was something that truly interested me and that I wanted to make my profession.

Ursula: Exactly. And since this very gallery grew and grew, we needed a full-time secretary and partner.

Manuela: In the beginning, we just worked from our apartment.

Ursula: And then eventually, you became a couple.

Manuela:  Yes. We fell in love and have been together for almost 31 years now...

Ursula: And I got four awesome grandchildren from it!

Manuela: Exactly.

Ursula: I believe you two still are a power couple. You complement each other. You both depend equally on the other because each of you is better at certain things, the other less so, and vice versa. You complement each other really well!

Opening Minds Through Art

Manuela: But how did you end up in the art world? We know that you had a small gallery and started a business with Iwan at some point. But you never studied art. Still, you have a great understanding of contemporary art. How did you get that?

Ursula: My learning process was that I knew a lot of people from the art scene simply thanks to my curiosity. I also collected art myself, albeit modestly at that time. You have to trust in something if you want to invest a larger sum.

For me, it wasn't an investment; it was really the joy of art and works that I wanted to own, just for myself.

It was still modest because I hadn't studied. When studying, you first learn the basics. You learn the history, and I hadn't done that. So, at first, I was more interested in aesthetics. The appearance and the materialisation captivated me.

Manuela: Can I also ask, what have you learned from art? How has it changed you? Or how did it influence you? 

Ursula: Shaped me?  

Manuela: Yes. You personally. When you compare yourself to others.

Ursula: I’m perhaps more tolerant of marginalised groups. Well, I always have something against stupidity. For me, it’s a topic that I’m not necessarily comfortable with as a person. But artists are special. I'm tolerant, no matter how they dress or behave. I couldn't be as tolerant towards my children or grandchildren now. Because I think that's part of it.

The artist is different. There is an otherness to them.

Amplifying Women’s Voices

Manuela: You also have a lot of women in your collection. Not only women, but what would you say, about 70 percent, 75 percent are women? 

Ursula: Two-thirds, yes. 

Manuela: Was that planned, or did it just happen? Why is art by women a focus in your collection? 

Ursula: I think that it happened unintentionally. I wasn't looking for it.

Women simply work differently. Not to say that they tick differently. Although, I do think that they tick a little differently than men.

That's how it should be. 

First of all, women have a different perception of physicality. They are also perhaps a little more uninhibited. This leads to different materialisations, different representations. The female artists work at home, at the kitchen table, or wherever they possibly can. One of them might have had a smaller studio, and depending on that, the work they produce is larger or smaller. But you could see a development when they dared to use new materials, like polyester. For example, Eva Hesse and Alina Szapocznikow were already working with these new media in the 1970s, at the end of the 1960s. 

Ursula: When you get to know an artist, you also learn about their background. Then, you find out what an abstract work of art is supposed to convey, for example. That's how I simply—I say simply now, but perhaps in retrospect, it was a bigger process that I could have studied at a university—learned about art through my curiosity.

Manuela: It's the best thing when you can get to know an artist and visit their studio.

Ursula: Definitely.

Manuela: It is so powerful to experience an artist in their atelier and witness the creation of an artwork.

Is there a studio that you still remember well or that triggered something in you?

Ursula: Yes, certainly. One of them, in the very early days, is Pipilotti Rist or our Zurich scene: Fischli/Weiss. We spent Sundays with them in their studios.

Manuela: Briefer/Zgraggen.

Ursula: Briefer/Zgraggen, exactly. I remember vividly when this work was created in the course of...

Manuela: ...in the course of time.

Ursula: Those were the first films I was confronted with, along with Pipilotti. I realised a lot from this film, and I recommend that anyone starting out in the art world who wants to get more involved watch this video.

Manuela: Yes.

Ursula: Because it makes you understand a lot about what can be created by accident or on purpose. Intentions are often not necessarily realised as planned. Artists like Jasper Johns or Matsutani in my current program make works out of latex and then allow these to change by shrinking or bursting them. They can't plan out what will happen.

The end result is that wonderful things emerge, created through these various processes.

I was very interested in that, too. Above all, I simply noticed that artists, whether in music, literature, or film, all have a certain sensory perception that a bank employee might not have. An artist senses this. Artists have a completely different perception.

Manuela: Yes.

Ursula: And everyone is somehow unique in terms of material, colours, and shapes. Each one has its own meaning, not all are the same. That's the beauty of it, everyone has their own...

Manuela: ...way of expressing themselves.

Do you think that in the last 30 years, since we opened the gallery and since you've been collecting art really intensively, female artists have emancipated themselves? Have female artists become more self-confident, or what do you think?

Ursula: Yes, absolutely. They now have more of a voice and bigger platforms. You can compare it a bit to politics or economics. More and more women are working at higher levels in these companies. Female artists are now, in my opinion, soon to be at a half-and-half ratio to men. 

If you look at programs in museums or galleries, there are many more female artists. 

Unfortunately, the older women were no longer able to see or experience this. They only partially received recognition after they died. But most of the older women couldn't actually benefit from the financial profits from their work. It’s not about acceptance, either.

I certainly collected differently because I was also thinking about women who create things. Especially with living artists, I saw into their backgrounds, and could see that they needed support. They needed success, they needed to generate money, and you can only do that by buying something from them and not just giving them money because that alone doesn’t do anything.

That has always been my aim: to promote such women, or at least support them.