Gérald Genta

Gérald Genta: Vibration of Colour

HENI is delighted to present Vibration of Colour, an exhibition of paintings by the legendary Swiss artist and watch designer Gérald Genta. The works span his decades-long artistic practice, ranging from the intimate landscape and still life paintings that he began in the 1950s to the esoteric, dreamlike abstractions of refractive colour that he made from the late 1990s through the 2000s. The exhibition opens on 23 June and runs until 1 July 2026.

The original artworks and a series of limited-editions prints will be available by application from 22 June on HENI Primary and HENI Editions respectively. Register your interest below to be notified when the sale goes live.

Widely celebrated as the ‘Picasso of Timepieces’, Genta created more than 100,000 watch designs in his lifetime, most famously the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and Patek Philippe Nautilus. Though most famous for his watches, painting was always at the heart of Genta’s career. As Genta himself remarked, “It is painting that led me to design watches.”

In the last two decades of his career, the consistent thread through Genta’s paintings is a distinct fascination with colour as a vehicle for expression. In his Faces works, clusters of mask-like faces emerge from kaleidoscopic, coloured backgrounds and display a range of emotion. His later abstract works take these compositions a step further, orchestrating colour and contour to create vibrant, oscillating fields.

Exhibition Details

Gérald Genta: Vibration of Colour
Opening event: 22 June, 6pm-8pm
Exhibition dates: 23 June–1 July 2026
Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 10am–6pm
Address: HENI Gallery, 6–10 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LB
Admission: Free entry

About Gérald Genta

Though most famous for his work as a watch designer, Gérald Genta was always first and foremost an artist. Born in Switzerland in 1931, Genta developed an early passion for drawing. He never received formal training and throughout his life created his art instinctually. Genta’s interest in drawing lead him to become a designer, with his designs taking the form of paintings. He consistently worked from the perspective of an artist, approaching watches not as objects but as motifs for creative exploration.

In the 1950s, Genta started painting the world around him through landscapes, still lifes and portraits. He found inspiration in a range of sources such as the Mediterranean Sea, classical architecture and car design. In the 1990s, Genta began refracting these sources, with his works becoming increasingly more abstract and his focus narrowing in on colour and contour.