Siegfried Contemporary was founded in London by Swiss art advisor Andreas Siegfried in 2010. His route into the art world has been an unusually broad one. His own collecting and curatorial work have subsequently shaped both the advisory and the exhibition programme.

Raised in Switzerland, Andreas moved between Milan, Paris and London in his early twenties before studying at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. He worked with Bruno Bischofberger in Zurich and later in the jewellery department at Christie’s in London. A period outside the art world followed: he co-owned Christian Louboutin’s first London store before returning to contemporary art in his late thirties, working with Max Wigram and White Cube. From 2008 to 2018 he represented Art Basel in the UK, developing close relationships with collectors and galleries as well as museum directors and curators.

In 2012, two years after establishing his independent advisory, Andreas began staging exhibitions in his own home in west London. He called it a “private projection space”: a place to introduce artists and test unexpected juxtapositions, while bringing visitors into direct contact with art outside the conventional gallery format. The programme subsequently extended to Saanen, Switzerland, alongside collaborative projects elsewhere.

The distinction between collecting and curating has always remained deliberately porous. Works from Andreas’s own collection regularly enter his exhibitions, while artists first encountered as a collector have led to exhibitions and longer collaborations. His programme has included early UK presentations and debuts as well as encounters across generations. It also reflects his longstanding interest in design and in art that approaches it.

Andreas describes his own approach as fundamentally visual. He is drawn to colour and materiality, and to work that resists the predictable. Living in London and travelling widely have continually exposed him to different ways of seeing; his conversations with artists have sharpened that instinct further. The result is an eclectic collection in which contemporary art enters into dialogue with design, including objects from other periods. The same eye underpins his advisory work.

Today, Siegfried Contemporary remains deliberately personal in scale. Andreas works directly with collectors and artists, while the London salon continues to function as both a home and an exhibition space, bringing the two sides of his practice into close contact.