Jacques-Edouard Berger, born in 1945, died unexpectedly of a heart attack in the fall of 1993, midway in a career which had taken him by then to the four corners of the earth. From his earliest years on, his life had been totally absorbed by the pursuit of art and beauty. During a period as a curator of the Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne, he was already active in organizing exhibitions and writing many articles and prefaces. But the world at large beckoned and, leaving his moorings, he set out and spent many months each year in traveling all over the world. He was particularly attracted to the ancient civilizations of Egypt, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma, etc., yet never neglected his European heritage as mirrored and celebrated in countless museums and galleries in Europe and the United States.
As the artistic leader and guide of numerous groups of eager admirers with whom he shared his vision and insights, he succeeded, over time, in creating a collection of well over 125,000 color slides, his own photographs, capturing the masterpieces that quickened his emotions. In turn, this unique treasure of his personal discoveries served to illustrate and animate the series of lectures he would give, between travels, to an ever growing following, lectures that, in focusing on the powerful revelation hidden in the works of art, sought to provide a veritable initiation. Two books "Pierres d'Egypte" and "L'oeil et l'éternité" also attest to this original approach and the acumen of his intuition.
The profound sorrow and distress caused by his untimely death prompted number of his friends and admirers to create the Foundation that bears his name and whose principal purpose is to promulgate the discovery and love of art.
As the artistic leader and guide of numerous groups of eager admirers with whom he shared his vision and insights, he succeeded, over time, in creating a collection of well over 125,000 color slides, his own photographs, capturing the masterpieces that quickened his emotions. In turn, this unique treasure of his personal discoveries served to illustrate and animate the series of lectures he would give, between travels, to an ever growing following, lectures that, in focusing on the powerful revelation hidden in the works of art, sought to provide a veritable initiation. Two books "Pierres d'Egypte" and "L'oeil et l'éternité" also attest to this original approach and the acumen of his intuition.
The profound sorrow and distress caused by his untimely death prompted number of his friends and admirers to create the Foundation that bears his name and whose principal purpose is to promulgate the discovery and love of art.
