Heinz Berggruen | |
|---|---|
 Heinz Berggruen photographed byOliver Mark in front ofPablo Picasso'sDora Maar with green nails from 1936 (Berlin 2000) | |
| Born | Heinz Berggruen (1914-01-06)January 6, 1914 |
| Died | February 6, 2007(2007-02-06) (aged 93) American Hospital,Neuilly-sur-Seine, France |
| Occupation(s) | Art dealer and collector |
| Known for | Providing art collection to formBerggruen Museum |
| Spouses | |
| Children | |
Heinz Berggruen (January 6, 1914 – February 23, 2007) was a German and American[1][2]art dealer andcollector who sold 165 works of art to the German federal government to form the core of theBerggruen Museum[3] in Berlin, Germany. He was the father ofJohn, Helen,Olivier andNicolas Berggruen.
Berggruen was born inWilmersdorf, Berlin[4] to Jewish parents: Ludwig Berggruen, a businessman who owned an office supply business before the war, and Antonie (née Zadek).[5][6] He attended the Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf and graduated from theFriedrich-Wilhelms (now Humboldt) University in 1932, where he read literature. After 1933, he continued his studies at the universities ofGrenoble and Toulouse.[7]
He contributed free-lance articles to theFrankfurter Zeitung, the forerunner of today'sFrankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He got around the restrictions on Jewish contributors by submitting his pieces through a colleague and signing them with his initials, H. B., rather than his full, Jewish-sounding surname.[8] He fled Germany in 1936.
Berggruen immigrated to the United States in 1936 and studied German literature atUniversity of California, Berkeley. After working as an art critic for theSan Francisco Chronicle, in 1939 he became an "assistant to the director" at theSan Francisco Museum of Modern Art.[9] There, he helped to prepare an exhibition about the Mexican painterDiego Rivera. Later, in New York in 1940, he metFrida Kahlo with whom he had a short love affair.[10][11][12][13] That same year he says that he bought his first picture for $100 while honeymooning in Chicago.[14] It was a watercolour byPaul Klee, and he bought it from a Jewish refugee in need of money.[7][15] While living in California, Berggruen was a student of the painterDavid Park.[16]
After theSecond World War Berggruen returned to Europe as member of the U.S. Army and worked briefly on the American-sponsored paperHeute in Munich (located in the same building where the novelistErich Kästner worked). He then moved to Paris, where he worked in the fine arts division ofUNESCO, run by his former boss at the San Francisco museum, Grace Morley. In 1947, he opened a small bookshop on theÎle Saint-Louis, specializing in illustrated books and later lithographs.[5] In the early 1950s, he became acquainted withTristan Tzara, who introduced him toPablo Picasso in Paris.[17] By the late 1950s, he had become an important dealer in Picasso prints, as well as in second-hand Picasso paintings.[18][19] His renowned art collection, which he valued at $450 million in 2001, included 165 works by 20th-century masters such asBraque,Matisse,Klee, andGiacometti, with a unique group of 85 works by Picasso.[20]
In 1977, Berggruen publishedDouglas Cooper's catalogue raisonné ofJuan Gris.[21] He finally resigned as director of the Paris gallery in 1980 in order to devote himself to collecting and dealing. In 1988, he donated 90 Klee works to theMetropolitan Museum of Art in New York, although he later expressed fear that his donation would go unnoticed in the museum's own vast collections.[8][22] The donation "made the Metropolitan the second most important Klee repository in the world, after the Kunstmuseum in Klee's native Switzerland," according to Michael Gross.[23] That same year, he exhibited his collection at theMusée d'Art et d'Histoire in Geneva.[24] In 1990, he lent a good part of his collection to theNational Gallery in London, where he exhibited works—including Seurat's landmark paintingLes Poseuses (1886)—until 2001.[25][26][27][28] In 1995, the German government lent him an apartment in Berlin and gave him an art museum opposite theCharlottenburg Palace. The collection, then comprising 118 works, opened to the public in 1997. At the time, then German culture minister Ulrich Roloff-Momin described it as "the most meaningful art transfer in Berlin's post-war history."[29] In 2000, he finally sold the art collection to thePrussian Cultural Heritage Foundation: the collection of 165 works (including 85 Picassos), which Berggruen valued at €750m, was purchased by the PCHF at about a quarter of that value.[30][31] It additionally includes over sixty works by Paul Klee, and twenty by Matisse.[32]
For his achievements, Berggruen was named aCommandeur of theLegion of Honour by the French government, received the Grand Cross of theOrder of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1999, and was named an honorary citizen of Berlin. He additionally received theJewish Museum Berlin's Award for Understanding and Tolerance in 2005, and was bestowed an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters fromAdelphi University in 1993.[33][34][35][36] In 2008, a Berlin school was named the Heinz-Berggruen-Gymnasium in his honor.[37][38] An honorary trustee of the Metropolitan Museum, he additionally served on the board of theBerlin Philharmonic.[39]
In 2016, Berggruen's Klee collection was exhibited in its entirety to inaugurate theMet Breuer, and traveled to theNational Gallery of Canada in 2018.[14][40]
Berggruen was married twice and had four children.[8] Berggruen, who until his death maintained homes in Paris,Gstaad, and Berlin (and in Geneva and New York before that),[41] was quoted as saying "I am neither French nor German, I am European. I'd very much like to think there was a European nationality, but I think I may be dreaming."[8] Through his mother, Antonie Zadek, Berggruen was a cousin of the opera singerHilde Zadek (1917–2019).[42]
Berggruen died at theAmerican Hospital of Paris inNeuilly-sur-Seine on 23 February 2007. At his own wish he was buried in the forest cemetery inWaldfriedhof Dahlem, in Berlin. His funeral was attended by German chancellorAngela Merkel, and then-presidentHorst Köhler, among others.[44][45]
heinz berggruen.
