Bernard Lewin, Art Dealer, Donor, 96
DGH
Bernard Lewin, a leading collector and dealer of Latin American art,
having suffered from heart problems for many months, died January 30,
2003, at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, at the age of 96.
Together with his late wife, Edith, he amassed a trove of close to 2,000
works, many of them by the best-known names in Mexican Modernist
painting. In 1997, the couple donated their holdings to the Los Angeles
County [California] Museum of Art, a gift that made LACMA's Latin
American collection among the top in the country.
The Lewins retained possession of two works they said they could not
bear to part with -- a portrait of Frida Kahlo by her husband, Diego
Rivera, and a work by Kahlo titled "Weeping Coconuts." Those two
paintings now revert to the museum.
"Bernard Lewin fell in love with an aesthetic," Andrea Rich, president
of LACMA, told The Times this week. She referred to his gift as "the
sort of donation that a publicly funded museum like LACMA hopes for.
Great works that stand the test of time are often beyond the financial
capabilities of a public museum to acquire. Patrons like the Lewins
become extremely important. Donor-collectors have helped build the core
collections of great museums."
Born in Weisbaden, Germany, in 1906, Lewin married in 1933. The couple
fled the Nazi regime in 1938 and settled in the San Fernando Valley,
where Bernard moved furniture for a living. He soon began to buy and
sell family estates and occasionally came across works by Latin American
artists among the furniture. This was his introduction to the art he
soon came to love, Rich said.
Lewin opened his first B. Lewin Furniture store in Van Nuys in 1956 and
displayed paintings from his private art collection on the walls. He
expanded his business to include stores in Glendale and North Hollywood
before he closed the business in 1972. By then he had opened a gallery
for Latin American art in Beverly Hills and wanted to devote all of his
time to it.
Lewin made his first trip to Mexico City in 1958, curious to meet the
artists whose work he had come to admire. Eventually he acquired
drawings, watercolors and paintings by the biggest names in the field,
including Rivera, Kahlo, Rufino Tamayo, David Siqueiros and Jose
Clemente Orozco. When he turned his collection over to LACMA, it
included 27 works by Tamayo and 23 by Rivera. The estimated value of the
collection was $25 million.
"The Lewins were trend makers," said Ilona Katzew, LACMA's curator of
Latin American art. "They started collecting at an early point."
During that first trip to Mexico, Lewin bought three paintings from the
estate of Diego Rivera, who had died in 1957. On later visits, he met
Tamayo, his favorite artist, and muralist Siqueiros. He formed lasting
friendships with both men.
One memorable trip Lewin made to Mexico City in 1964 was to celebrate
the official pardon and release from prison of Siqueiros, who had spent
four years in jail. An outspoken Communist and political activist,
Siqueiros was arrested in 1960 during street demonstrations by striking
railway workers and teachers. To celebrate his return to freedom, Lewin
bought 10 of Siqueiros' drawings, which helped the artist finance a
mural for Mexico City's Chapultepec Castle museum.
When the Lewins opened their B. Lewin Galleries in 1968, they introduced
their clients to a number of the Latin American artists they had
discovered on their own. In 1984, they moved their gallery to Palm
Springs and finally closed it in 1997 when they retired. Two years
later, Edith Lewin died of cancer. At LACMA, a permanent gallery space
was established in the couple's name three years ago to house the
collection. More recently a study center for scholarly research in Latin
American art was also opened.
The Lewins also donated a small collection of art to the Palm Springs
Desert Museum near their home in Rancho Mirage. It consisted primarily
of pre-Columbian works.