The Emil Bührle Collection has been completely reinstalled at the Kunsthaus Zurich, where the works remain on long-term loan from the foundation that manages them. The new display, which opened in mid-April 2026, presents 205 artworks to the public including five authentic paintings by Vincent van Gogh. According to The Art Newspaper, a sixth Van Gogh is undergoing conservation and a seventh painting by the artist was withdrawn from exhibition after a Nazi-era restitution issue surfaced.
Several paintings from the collection were removed in June 2024 after the foundation adopted updated international guidelines on handling potential Nazi-looted art. A 2024 assessment by historian Raphael Gross, commissioned by Zurich city authorities, determined that more than 60 percent of the works had belonged to Jewish collectors before 1945 with doubts persisting over the acquisition of nearly 90 pieces. The foundation has since reached discreet restitution agreements with heirs for at least two paintings by other artists, allowing those works to return to view.
The five Van Gogh paintings now on display span much of the artist’s career and include the 1885 “Head of a Peasant,” the 1887 “The Bridges of Asnières” that Bührle purchased through a London dealer, and the 1888 masterpiece “The Sower at Sunset.” Also shown is “Branches of Blossoming Almond,” which was stolen from the Kunsthaus in 2008 and later recovered, along with the summer 1887 self-portrait that Van Gogh gave to his friend Emile Bernard. The Art Newspaper noted that these five works are regarded by the foundation as free of provenance concerns.
The acknowledged forgery displayed alongside the authentic pieces is Judith Gérard’s modified version of Van Gogh’s “Self-Portrait for Gauguin,” which she created between 1897 and 1898 after the original. Bührle acquired the Gérard work in 1939 at a Lucerne auction of pieces seized by the Nazi regime from German museums, initially believing it to be authentic. It is exhibited next to the real 1888 self-portrait in a juxtaposition that underscores the collection’s history of attribution challenges.
Emil Bührle, a German-born Swiss industrialist who manufactured arms supplied to Nazi Germany and the Allies, built much of the collection between 1936 and 1956 by buying on the Swiss market after the war. The Kunsthaus had previously framed the holdings in the exhibition “A Future for the Past,” which examined the dilemmas of art, context, war and conflict and ran through the end of 2025. That contextual approach continues in the current dense, salon-style hang that places works close together without extensive individual labels.
The Bührle holdings are frequently described as the most significant private group of Van Gogh paintings on public view, rivaled only by the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Provenance research published by the foundation has not resolved all questions, and the museum continues to present the collection with that ongoing tension acknowledged. The rehang integrates the latest outcomes from those inquiries while keeping the core Impressionist and modern works accessible to visitors.
