Contemporary art collectors for more than 30 years, Daniel and Florence Guerlain rapidly developed a passion for drawing and have put together a collection of works from more than two hundred and forty artists of forty or so nationalities. The quality and wealth of this collection were revealed by their donation of 1200 drawings to the Centre Pompidou and  dedicated exhibitions in Paris (470 works at the Centre Pompidou, 2013), in Libourne (100 drawings at the Musée des beaux-arts, Chapelle du Carmel, 2014), in Sweden (250 drawings at the Nordiska Akvarellmuseet, 2015-2016) and in Aalborg, Denmark (250 drawings at the Kunsten Museum, 2016).

But Daniel and Florence Guerlain have not contented themselves with putting together the most important private collection of contemporary drawings in France. As early as 2006, they created the Contemporary Drawing Prizewhich rapidly became a benchmark on the art scene. Why a prize dedicated to drawing? Quite simply because this couple of collectors wished to promote and highlight a medium embodying both great classical tradition and bold modernity. For a long time used as an instrument of apprenticeship or a means of study, little by little drawing acquired its own full-fledged status nowadays acknowledged by everyone. Considered to be the finest means of capturing fleeting intuition and the closest medium to thought, drawing allows for a freedom of expression that always goes straight to the essential. Then again, the diversity of the graphic means - pencil, charcoal, ink, wash tint, gouache, watercolour, pastel, felt tip or sanguine – is such that works on paper or cardboard, collages and wall drawings offer a limitless field of exploration for connoisseurs, ever more passionate and growing in number, of contemporary drawing.

The exceptional dedicated exhibition by the Centre Pompidou in 2017 of the 30 artists distinguished by the Prize illustrates the recognition of the quality and importance of the work accomplished by these great French art patrons. The first exhibition of the Drawing Prize abroad was presented in Germany at the Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen until the 24th of February 2019.