Comment from the collector Silvain Guignard on the website:
"After 40 years of collecting, in 2022 I was able to bring around 400 objects - mainly scroll paintings, but also folding screens, sculptures, ceramics, etc. - to Switzerland, where they are now stored in my semi-public art space in Aarau.
Many works have not yet been processed in terms of art history and iconography. However, this website aims to present nine processed objects per month. Thanks to many relationships with dealers and craftsmen
In the Kyoto area where I lived, I can also help to fulfill special requests for objects of classical Japanese art."
Profile of art collector & biwa player Silvain Kyokusai Guignard
Silvain Guignard was born in Aarau, Switzerland. He was born into a family of artists: his grandmother was a professional pianist and his father Roland Guignard was a renowned painter.
Silvain Guignard first studied piano at the Zurich Conservatory and then musicology at the University of Zurich. He completed his doctorate in 1983 with a monograph on the waltzes of F. Chopin. While studying musicology, he also studied Japanese studies.
With a scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education (Monbushō) he was able to travel to Japan in 1983 where four years later at Osaka Gakuin University he became a lecturer in European and Japanese music and later also in art. With his wife, a Swiss fellow student, he stayed in Japan as a full-time professor for almost 40 years, until 2022 - finally near Kyoto, where he had built himself a Japanese-Western house.
As a musicologist, Silvain Guignard's main interest was epic Lute tradition of the biwa : he received the title shūshihan , which qualifies him as a professional biwa player Despite his return to Switzerland, he continues to be involved in concerts of this Japanese bard culture.
Already during his student days, Silvain Guignard was interested in Japanese art history: he attended seminars with Prof. Reinhold BRINKER and was friends with this teacher until his death. In Japan he met the art dealer KUMANO Kōtarō, who helped him build a collection of Japanese paintings thirty years ago. Silvain Guignard's collecting activities became more intense with each passing year. He organized several sales exhibitions in Zurich, Basel, Lucerne and Bern with the interior design store Sato Slow Living in Zurich. With Covid, there was a break in exhibition activities; however, they are now being resumed under his own direction. One or two exhibitions are planned each year.
Silvain Guignard, who speaks and can read Japanese fluently, has built up a good network of craftsmen and art dealers in Kyoto over the last 15 years, with whom he still maintains close contact from Switzerland.