The Nancy Varenne-Brunot Collection, to be auctioned on October 27, 2026, in Neuilly-sur-Seine

“Collecting is a solitary and intuitive process, guided entirely by emotion. Everything I’ve acquired, I’ve hung on the walls of my home to live with. I’ve never once thought about reselling anything or building up a stock. For me, art is the backdrop to life."

Nancy Varenne-Brunot, collectionneuse 

Family legacy: the origins of a collection

Born into a family where art and culture have always played a central role, Nancy Varenne-Brunot accompanied her parents to museums and exhibitions from a very young age. From childhood onward, this art lover was able to cultivate a love of beauty, as her parents themselves were collectors. They built a collection of 104 pieces, which they eventually donated to the city of Geneva. This collection consisted mainly of Impressionists but also, rather unusually for the Geneva bourgeoisie of the time, contemporary works, including a Fautrier.

Nancy Varenne-Brunot: five decades of collecting

After more than fifty years of collecting, Nancy Varenne-Brunot has no regrets: “Everything I bought, I bought to hang it up, to make it a lifelong companion,” the collector emphasizes.

This art lover has always followed her intuition and emotions, without any speculative motives. This freedom was evident even in her most daring acquisitions: a monumental sculpture by Fan Xiaoyan purchased in Shanghai, which required two cranes to install in Barbizon. Behind every acquisition, her late husband, François Brunot, accompanied and supported her in each of her choices and artistic passions.

All chosen in less than twenty seconds by a woman who turned love at first sight into a way of life, these works have found their place on the walls of Parisian apartments and their home in Barbizon. Some artists even installed them themselves.

"Nancy Varenne-Brunot’s collection reflects a curiosity that knows no stylistic boundaries: from Arman’s New Realism to Gérard Schlosser’s narrative figuration, from Jean Fautrier’s abstraction to Raynaud’s conceptual art, each work follows a common thread: immediate emotion."
Ophélie Guillerot, Post-war & Contemporary art Director, Aguttes

Alain Jacquet, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Jean Fautrier: the most striking works in the Nancy Varenne-Brunot Collection.

The Nancy Varenne-Brunot Collection brings together several works that are artistically significant or emotionally powerful.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, an inseparable duo

Her brother, Daniel Varenne, also played a decisive role; as a world-renowned gallery owner, he helped her develop her eye for art at a very early age. Among the first to represent Christo, he introduced his sister to the artist’s work. “I remember seeing one of the artist’s first ‘wraps’ at Daniel’s place, in the entryway to his apartment. A dirty, shapeless canvas made of paper and packaging. I asked him if he’d put it there to throw it away. Daniel replied, with complete conviction: ‘This is an artist I’m going to represent. ’ He was right,” as Nancy Varenne-Brunot likes to recount; she later purchased Le Pont Neuf Wrapped, Project for Paris, 1985, by Christo & Jeanne-Claude (1935–2020 and 1935–2009).

Alain Jacquet’s Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (1964)

This silkscreen reinterpretation of Manet’s masterpiece playfully questions the conventions of reproduction and the act of looking. A key milestone in the art of the 1960s, this edition of 95 copies explores the boundary between fine art and mass culture. In this diptych, the image dissolves into a grid of screen-printed dots, evoking the world of illustrated magazines as much as that of American Pop Art. Acrylic and screen printing combine here to question the notion of a work’s uniqueness and the status of the reproduced image.

Jean Fautrier’s Grande Tête Tragique

With Grande Tête Tragique, purchased in Geneva on a purely emotional impulse, Jean Fautrier has earned his place in this collection. “I saw this head and it moved me,” as Nancy Varenne-Brunot recalls. Directly linked to the memory of the war, this sculpture is the collector’s only entirely solitary and personal acquisition. Created in 1942, at the height of the German occupation, Jean Fautrier’s Grande Tête Tragique stands as one of the most striking visual testimonies to the turmoil of World War II. In this bronze, Fautrier distills a battered humanity, reduced to the very essence of its suffering. The face, barely recognizable, seems to emerge from molten matter, as if torn from destruction. The forms, at once swollen and lacerated, foreshadow, in a disturbing way, the Otages series that the artist would begin two years later. Far from any academicism, Fautrier invents here a sculptural language in which the wound becomes form, and silence, expression. This work, with its intimate scale, bears witness to the singular genius of an unclassifiable artist, a precursor of Art Informel and a leading figure of postwar Europe.

Jean-Pierre Raynaud’s Paire de stèles

La Paire de stèles de Jean-Pierre Raynaud réunit deux éléments caractéristiques du vocabulaire plastique de l'artiste : la céramique émaillée blanche, omniprésente dans son œuvre depuis les années soixante-dix, et l'objet enfermé, mis sous vitrine comme une relique ou une pièce à conviction. Chaque stèle, d’un grand format, enferme dans une boîte de verre un objet soigneusement choisi : un calice étrusque et une boîte de conserve. Entre l'antique et l'industriel, le sacré et le trivial, Raynaud joue sur les registres avec une économie de moyens qui lui est propre. La blancheur immaculée de la céramique neutralise tout affect et confère à l'ensemble une rigueur quasi clinique, proche de l'univers du pot de fleurs rouge qui fit sa notoriété. Ces stèles interrogent le temps, la mémoire et la valeur que nous accordons aux objets, qu'ils viennent de l'Antiquité ou du supermarché. 

C'était pas comme ça, Gérard Schlosser

At FIAC, Nancy Varenne-Brunot discovers Gérard Schlosser. Decades after acquiring C'était pas comme ça (1976), the collector still loves this work just as much and notes that this leading figure of narrative figuration is currently experiencing a remarkable resurgence of interest on the international market.

World record set by Aguttes for a work from the Nancy Varenne-Brunot Collection

In 2020, Aguttes had already set a world record for Huang Yong Ping, selling a major piece from the Nancy Varenne-Brunot collection for €411,920: a monumental installation consisting of five copper turtles, including one large one and one coiled turtle. The artist himself had installed it in the collector’s apartment, taking great care to ensure the exact orientation of each element. It was a work that had been lived with and inhabited, confirming Nancy Varenne-Brunot’s exceptional eye for art.

“Living surrounded by beautiful things I’ve chosen myself, seeing that these choices are now recognized and valued, that’s a source of deep pride. My friends haven’t collected the way I have. Some have inherited works of art, but they haven’t embarked on this personal, instinctive, sometimes slightly crazy adventure. And then there were the objects: at the antique dealers’, with François, it was the same thing. Instinctive, immediate, whether it was a piece of furniture or a painting.”
Nancy Varenne-Brunot, collectionneuse

Upcoming Post-war & Contemporary art auction

Public Auction
Tuesday, October 27, at 3:00 p.m.

Public Viewing
October 23–27 (excluding weekends): 10:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m., then 2:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m.
Tuesday, October 27: 10:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
By appointment outside these hours

Learn more about the Post-war & Contemporary art auction