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Biver and Chopard are among the houses participating in TimeForArt, a Dec. 7 benefit for the Swiss Institute, an art institution in New York.
Pierre Biver, the creative director of the luxury watch brand Biver, was on a video call with a reporter early last month when he turned his laptop toward one wall of his apartment in Geneva to show off an untitled abstract painting by the Swiss contemporary artist Guillaume Ehinger.
At 180 centimeters by 240 centimeters (almost 6 feet by 8 feet), the acrylic on canvas, which depicts a series of Rorschach-like blots amid a graduated range of blue and orange hues, dwarfed the space. Mr. Biver acknowledged that asking Mr. Ehinger, whose specialty is large-format paintings, to create a work of art for the dial of a wristwatch posed some challenges.
“When you’re working on a big scale, it’s not only about the painting, it’s about the light in the room,” Mr. Biver said. “It’s about the way it occupies space. How are you going to transfer that and bring the same emotions on a watch? And I thought to myself, ‘Well, that’s not my problem. It’s Guillaume’s responsibility.’”
Now, a one-of-a-kind 39-millimeter Automatique watch by Biver in steel — with a dial enameled and engraved under Mr. Ehinger’s direction — is among the 25 timepieces scheduled for auction Dec. 7 during the second edition of TimeForArt.
The biennial event, held at Phillips’s Park Avenue gallery and organized in association with Bacs & Russo, is a fund-raiser for the Swiss Institute, a nonprofit art institution in New York City.