Piaget joins Art Genève this year not as a discreet presence in the background, but as an official partner intent on shaping the conversation where contemporary art, design and watchmaking intersect. At the heart of this commitment is the newly announced sponsorship of the Prix Solo Art Genève – Piaget, a distinction that underlines how seriously the maison takes its role in the cultural fabric of Geneva and beyond.
Prix Solo Art Genève – Piaget
The Prix Solo Art Genève – Piaget rewards the strongest solo presentation among the galleries exhibiting single-artist booths at the fair, focusing on both the artistic quality of the work and the coherence of the curation. A three-member jury drawn from leading European institutions will decide this year’s laureate: Kathrin Bentz, Director of Fri-Art in Fribourg, Céline Poulin, Director of Frac Île-de-France, and Nicolas Trembley, exhibition curator and curator of the Syz Collection.
Their choice will have a tangible impact on Geneva’s public collections, as one work from the winning stand will be acquired for MAMCO, the city’s museum of contemporary art. In this way, Piaget’s presence at Art Genève extends beyond visibility in the halls of Palexpo and into the long-term enrichment of the city’s cultural heritage.
A long relationship with the visual arts
Piaget’s engagement with the visual arts is not a recent marketing initiative but a tradition that reaches back to the 1960s, when Yves Piaget actively sought dialogue with leading contemporary creators. The maison collaborated with figures such as Salvador Dalí, Arman, Hans Erni and Alberto Rizzo, integrating their work into a universe where jewellery, watchmaking and art share the same stage.
For decades, the Salon Piaget on Geneva’s Rue du Rhône served as a platform for exhibitions that drew directly from the city’s cultural life. In recent years, the brand has continued to invite strong artistic voices into its orbit, commissioning works from Pierre & Gilles and the Verhoeven Twins, reinforcing a conviction that hand-crafted mastery feeds artistic expression in both ateliers and studios.
The Piaget space at Art Genève
At Art Genève, Piaget presents a dedicated space designed by French designer Jérémy Pradier-Jeauneau, a scenographic environment that treats time not as an abstract idea but as something given physical form through volume and structure. The space is curated with pieces of contemporary collectible design, creating a setting that feels closer to a carefully considered installation than a traditional fair stand.
This is also where the Prix Solo Art Genève – Piaget ceremony will take place, bringing together gallerists, artists and collectors around a shared focal point inside the fair. Within this environment, the dialogue between Piaget and the arts is not theoretical; it is staged, visible and accessible to visitors who move between watches, artworks and design objects without clear borders.
Andy Warhol and Piaget
A highlight within the Piaget space is a focused presentation devoted to Andy Warhol and his connection to the maison. Piaget has built a strong partnership with The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, allowing the brand to revisit and reinterpret the pop art pioneer’s visual language within the context of watchmaking.
This collaboration has already led to special Piaget Andy Warhol editions and, more recently, the Andy Warhol “Collage” watch, whose dial uses stone marquetry inspired by one of Warhol’s self-portraits. In a fair environment where colour, texture and material experimentation are on constant display, this watch reads as a distilled synthesis of Piaget’s flair for ornamental dials and Warhol’s unmistakable iconography.
Gregor Hildebrandt’s Bowie-taped tiger’s eye
Piaget’s exploration of artistic crossovers at Art Genève continues with a work by German artist Gregor Hildebrandt, presented within the same space. Known for drawing on music, cinema and underground culture in his practice, Hildebrandt works across painting, sculpture and installation, often using recorded media as a physical material.
For Art Genève, Hildebrandt took inspiration from a Piaget Andy Warhol watch and created a work using audio magnetic tapes of David Bowie’s song “Andy Warhol”. By manipulating colour and texture, he arrives at a tiger’s eye motif that culminates in the piece “und wieder Augen wie Bernstein” (2025), a visual homage to both Warhol and Bowie that fits naturally within Piaget’s world of hard-stone dials and precious surfaces.
Colour, emotion and symbolism
Beyond exhibitions and awards, Piaget is also supporting an Art Talk organised by Le Magazine du Temps during the fair, centred on the theme “Colour: Between artistic emotion and symbolic language”. The discussion will look at how chromatic harmonies are constructed in both art and craft, addressing the balance between aesthetic choices and the layered meanings attached to specific hues.
For a maison that has long embraced vivid colour in dials, gemstones and enamel, this conversation is not an abstract intellectual exercise but something grounded in its daily creative decisions. In the context of Art Genève, it provides a bridge between the concerns of artists, designers and the watchmaking artisans working behind the scenes in Piaget’s own workshops.
Piaget: daring creativity since 1874
Piaget’s role at Art Genève is anchored in a history that began in 1874, when Georges-Édouard Piaget established his first workshop in La Côte-aux-Fées to produce high-precision movements. That focus on technical excellence laid the groundwork for the ultra-thin calibres that, from the late 1950s onwards, became one of the maison’s signatures and the foundation of the Altiplano collection.
Over the decades, Piaget has positioned itself as an innovator at the intersection of watchmaking and jewellery, always placing creativity and artistic values at the centre of its identity. In the Ateliers de l’Extraordinaire, artisans work with gold, ornamental stones and precious gems to shape pieces that sit within collections such as Altiplano, Piaget Polo, Limelight Gala, Possession, Piaget Sunlight, Piaget Rose and Extremely Piaget, all united by a distinctive sense of style and confidence.
In choosing to partner with Art Genève and to tie its name to the Prix Solo, Piaget does not simply present watches in a familiar environment. It steps fully into the contemporary art conversation, aligning its future with artists, curators and institutions that give today’s creative landscape its energy and direction.
