Ten years before ARS Foundation
- Editorial
- May 30, 2014
- 3 min read
Updated: Jul 19
Day Star Art Fund: the laboratory where art finance was born in Europe.
Before it was a foundation, it was a investment fund. The art finance specialisation that today defines the ARS Foundation group was tested, a decade and a half earlier, in regulated investment vehicle dedicated to American modern art.
In June 2014, the specialised financial press recorded an unusual transaction: a Swiss investment fund, Day Star Fund, announced the purchase of 21 paintings by masters of modern and contemporary art — among them Willem de Kooning, Francis Bacon, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline — for a combined value of more than 50 million dollars. The news, published by Funds Society, named as the person responsible for the transaction Jaume Torres, today founder and president of the ARS Foundation group, which now operates the commercial brands The Embassy of Art and Day Star.
It was not an isolated collector's purchase. Day Star Art Fund operated under European regulation for expert investors, in the process of adapting to the AIFMD directive, with a minimum investment of one million dollars. Behind the vehicle stood a complete institutional architecture: the Swiss company DS Wealth Management as promoter, The law firm Ellul & Co. with Mr. Marc X. Ellul as legal counsel, RSM (formerly Nexus Management) with Mr. Moses Cohen as administrator, KPMG as auditor and Société Générale Hambros Bank as depositary. The fund targeted UHNW clients, principally from Asia, Latin America and the Middle East, offering them art as an asset class capable of decorrelating a portfolio against the volatility of traditional financial markets.
A MODEL RECOGNISED BY THE INDUSTRY
According to the group's corporate documentation, Day Star Art Fund was established between 2012 and 2017 as the first European alternative investment fund (AIF) dedicated specifically to modern art, with a capitalisation that came to exceed 100 million euros and annual revaluations above 20%. The vehicle was recognised by Deloitte Luxembourg in its Art & Finance Report 2016 for its pioneering management of an AIF dedicated to modern American art — a distinction that also appears in the professional record of Marta Areny, today Secretary General of ARS Foundation, who directed the fund during those years before joining the Foundation's management of collections and international cultural projects.
The fund itself evolved: between 2016 and 2020 it gave way to Day Star Contemporary, a corporate contemporary art vehicle whose collection constitutes, according to the same group records, the direct origin of the current ARS Collection. Day Star Fund, as the original structure, was eventually acquired by a European private banking institution, closing a cycle that had begun as an experiment in institutional art finance.
FROM A INVESTMENT FUND TO A NON PROFIT PRIVATE FOUNDATION
Read in retrospect, the throughline is direct: long before the ARS Foundation group (2025) existed as a commercial vehicle, Jaume Torres and Marta Areny had already managed, audited and placed on the market a regulated art fund, with institutional investors, bank custodians and recognition from one of the Big Four auditors.
That experience — structuring art as a financial asset, not merely as a collectible object — is what today translates into the Art Consulting, Art Leasing and financial structuring services offered by the ARS Foundation group, and into ARS Hospitality's approach to hotels, offices and real estate projects: treating a collection as a long-term decision with its own curatorial and financial structure, not as a decorative expense.
Day Star Art Fund was not an anecdotal precedent. It was the proving ground where, with market data and under regulatory oversight, the thesis that ARS Foundation applies today at scale in projects around the world was validated.
Sources
● Corporate documentation of VASARI S.A. / ARS Foundation ("Qui Som", 2025) — fund capitalisation, Deloitte Luxembourg recognition (Art & Finance Report, 2016), evolution into Day Star Contemporary, and acquisition by a European private bank.
● Professional profile of Marta Areny, ARS Foundation — direction of Day Star Fund and its recognition in Deloitte's Art & Finance Report (2016).
