JENA.- The Musée du Petit Palais in Geneva houses one of the most important European art collections with its extensive inventory of paintings, sculptures and graphic works. The collection is not easily available to be seen but now citizens and visitors to Jena can go to the museum and look at paintings made by some of the most important painters of all time. Included in the exhibition are works of art made by Marie Bracquemond, Gustave Caillebotte, Louis Valtat, Suzanne Valadon, Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, Moise Kisling, Kees van Dongen, Monet, Renoir, Degas, Chagall and Picasso

Oscar Ghez de Castelnuovo, an industrialist with a passion for painting, is at the origin of this museum which displays works of great quality from its own collection and organises temporary exhibitions. From impressionism to surrealism and its extensions to abstract art, avant-garde art is prominent here. It is impossible to mention all the artists represented: Monet, Renoir, Manet, Degas, Caillebotte, Sérusier, Gauguin, Vuillard, Marquet, Van Dongen, Vlaminck, Derain, Dufy, Chagall, Picasso, Foujita and Soutine are here, among others. Several rooms are devoted respectively to Louis Valtat, a fauvist painter, Moïse Kisling and Nicolas Tarkhoff, representatives of the Paris school, and to the sculptor Zadkine.

Oscar Gehz was born in Tunisia. The family moved to Marseille when he was young. After graduating from university, he joined his brother to establish a succesful technology Co in Italy. As a jew, he had problems with the rise of Mussolini. The brothers exchanged factories with the Pirelli company, and relocated to Lyon. When the German occupation created difficulties in the South of France the brothers emigrated to USA. Immediately after the war, they succesfully re-established the business. In 1950 Ghez suffered the death of many relatives, and expanded his art collection.

In 1963, the business was sold, and Gehz moved to Geneva. In 1968 he established a private museum to display his art collection. He died in 1998 with an art collection of several works. He was particularly interested in the development of the impressionists and paintings from artists who suffered in the holocaust.

The Musée you Petit Palais is not accessible to the public.