Heinz Berggruen; Independent (art collector)
Hyfler/Rosner
Collector of Picasso and Klee
The Independent
28 February 2007
Marcus Williamson
When Heinz Berggruen was presented with the Jewish Museum's
Award for Understanding and Tolerance, in 2005, it was in
recognition of his wish for reconciliation in German-Jewish
history. He had returned to his native Berlin in 1996 to
establish the Berggruen Museum, based on his own collection
of 20th-century art - including a large body of work by
Pablo Picasso - acquired during 60 years of exile in France
and America.
Explaining his motivation to return, he observed that
"understanding and tolerance are traditional Jewish virtues"
and that "one can no longer turn one's back on the country
of Dürer and Goethe, Beethoven and Brahms, Gottfried Benn
and Max Beckmann".
Heinz Berggruen was born in 1914, the son of a Prussian
stationery supplier. Fascinated by French culture, he
studied literature and art history at Grenoble and Toulouse
before moving back to Germany to work for the Frankfurter
Zeitung newspaper, where his articles were latterly bylined
with just the initials "hb" to disguise his surname. In 1936
he decided to emigrate to America, gaining a one-year
scholarship at the University of Berkeley and working as a
freelance art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle.
At San Francisco's Museum of Art, Berggruen saw his first
paintings by Paul Klee and later curated there the 1939
exhibition of work by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera.
Berggruen and Rivera's wife, Frida Kahlo, eloped to New York
for a month-long affair.
Berggruen bought his first painting, a Klee watercolour,
Perspectiv-Spuk (1938), in Chicago whilst on honeymoon with
his first wife, Lillian Zellerbach, in 1939. His first
Picasso drawing, La Dormeuse, was acquired from the
Surrealist poet Paul Eluard, who was short of money and
threw in a work by Klee for free. The Picasso piece would
remain in Berggruen's collection for the rest of his life.
During the Second World War Berggruen was posted to Europe,
making use of his language skills as a sergeant in the US
Army Signal Corps. The bombing of his home town had left it
in ruins with little to offer, so in 1947 he went to Paris
and set up as a bookseller and art dealer in a small shop on
the Place Dauphine on the Left Bank. He recalled that "my
enthusiasm and my eyes were all the capital I had".
For more than 30 years the Galerie Berggruen hosted
exhibitions by many of the greatest names of 20th-century
art, including Picasso, Klee, Jean Arp, Paul Cézanne and
Henri Matisse, whose papiers découpés (cut-outs) he is
credited with discovering. Berggruen first met Picasso in
1949 and they became good friends. He described him as:
the most fascinating man I had the chance to meet in my
life. He wasn't playing the artist; he was just an extremely
bright, witty, generous human being.
The gallery became known for its artists' books and
"editions", limited runs of lithographs by well-known
artists, at prices which made their work more accessible to
collectors.
In 1980 Berggruen gave up the gallery to devote more time to
art in his role as collector, or "art hunter". During the
1980s he made a gift of 90 Klee paintings and drawings to
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The National
Gallery in London was from 1990 the temporary home for much
of his collection until its relocation to Berlin in 1996. In
2004 a biographical film about Berggruen, Mein Leben, ma vie
was shown on German television, while last year saw an
exhibition of over 150 Picasso works and documents from the
Berggruen collection at the Musée Picasso in Paris.
When asked what artworks he would like to take to the grave,
Berggruen replied: Picasso's 1939 portrait of Dora Maar,
Matisse's Seilspringerin and Klee's Klassische Küste.
"Of course, I would get the coffin packed full," he quipped.
Marcus Williamson
Heinz Berggruen, art collector and dealer: born Berlin 5
January 1914; married first 1939 Lillian Zellerbach (one
son, one daughter), second Bettina Moissi (two sons); died
Paris 23 February 2007.