Zurich art gallery owner Max Bollag dies
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Zurich art gallery owner Max Bollag dies
Associated Press
GENEVA - The Zurich art gallery owner Max Bollag, whose belief that art
should be available to all in an unguarded space resulted in the theft
of several works by Pablo Picasso, has died at age 91, his family said
Thursday.
Bollag's wife, Susi, had died eight days before, the family said in a
death notice in the daily Neue Zuercher Zeitung.
Over the decades, Bollag became a household name to Swiss art lovers.
His gallery - once described in a local newspaper as a "mixture of a
scrapyard and a treasure chamber" - was a haven for art aficionados,
who liked to roam through Picassos, Cezannes and Derains, often stacked
high alongside art books or haphazardly hung close together on the
walls.
Bollag's fame - especially in the wider, non-artistic community - grew
after two spectacular thefts in the 1990s, when a total of nine works
by Spanish painter Picasso were stolen from the unguarded and uninsured
gallery.