Swatch Watches Reimagine Famous Masterpieces

The Swiss company that pioneered the low-cost wrist watch has come up with a new arty collection.

Credit: Swatch x Guggenheim

Swatch has teamed up with the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Venice, Italy, to create a collection inspired by 20th-century artworks from the Impressionist and Abstract Expressionist movements, and has turned four 20th-century masterpieces into wearable art. The new watches are inspired by the works of Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Paul Klee and Jackson Pollock.

The watch inspired by Monet’s The Palazzo Ducale, Seen From San Giorgio Maggiore (1908) features the Venetian palace on its face, whilst the watch face of Degas’ Swatch isolates a dancer’s feet, her legs crossed into a difficult pose, framed within a pink case and gold hour markers - from his Dancers in Green and Yellow (1903).

Another of the watches takes inspiration from Klee’s The Bavarian Don Giovanni (1919), which features a figure climbing a ladder surrounded by the names of five women - listed on the watch strap - with whom, the Guggenheim says, Klee had “fleeting romantic interludes.” The final watch of the four references Pollock’s Alchemy (1947) with bright hour and minute hands contrasted against the layered and labyrinthine work within a transparent case.

This isn’t the first time Swatch has showcased famous artworks with its products. There have been previous partnerships with the Museum of Modern Art, the Louvre Abu Dhabi, and the estates of René Magritte and Jean-Michel Basquiat.

The name Swatch is a contraction of "second watch", and its "low-cost, high-tech, artistic and emotional" watches marketed as casual accessories. Prices for the latest line up start at $105.