Heinz Berggruen (1914-2007) was one of the leading modern art dealers from the 1950s to 1970s. His gallery, rue de l’Université, in Paris, did not have the monumental dimensions that are the norm today, but we saw it. oddities there. One of his last exhibitions, in 1981, was dedicated to works on paper from Picasso’s last decade, a period then maligned.
But Berggruen was also a stubborn collector, as can be seen in Berlin, in the museum he founded there and which was acquired by the German State in 2000. It is currently under construction and his works are in circulation. The exhibition at the Orangerie Museum, “Heinz Berggruen, a merchant and his collection”, inaugurated on October 2 in Paris, is one of the stops on this world tour.
It presents just under a hundred works. In chronological order of authors: Cézanne, Matisse, Klee, Picasso, Braque and Giacometti. In terms of quantities, Picasso dominates by far. Famous paintings by these famous artists alternate with other lesser-known paintings by the same artists, which are no less interesting, if not more, due to their lesser notoriety. The pendant is elegant, in a white architecture that favors views and visual connections between, for example, a nude cut out in blue gouache by Matisse and a small sculpture by Picasso. It is therefore a very luxurious exhibition, which celebrates the vision of a great connoisseur.
Cubism, his great passion
Born in 1914 into a middle-class Jewish family in Berlin, Heinz Berggruen studied literature and journalism in this city and then in France. Forced to flee from IIImy Reich emigrated to California in 1936 on a scholarship to the University of Berkeley and later worked at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He fought in the American army and was responsible, in 1945, for creating a magazine that would be, in Germany liberated from Nazism, a kind of magazine. life. But he preferred, to this task, to write about contemporary art and, soon, sell it. In 1947 he opened his first gallery in Paris, Place Dauphine, which was bought in 1949 by neighbors who wanted to expand, the Simone Signoret-Yves Montand couple. He then moved to rue de l’Université, where he remained until his retirement.
It carries out two activities simultaneously, one of which finances the other. One is to buy, display and sell. The other is to buy and not sell. The first is banal. Like any gallerist, Heinz Berggruen chooses artists, organizes presentations, publishes catalogs (small and elegant) and sells. This part of his life is only visible in the exhibition in the last room, suggested by posters and catalogues. If many are devotees of Picasso and Klee, others defend Tapies, Poliakoff or Soulages. The eclecticism of the programming does not respond to clear preferences, but rather to a pragmatism, obviously effective, since it allows Berggruen to continue with his other work, to constitute a coherent collection of the artists who are dear to him: the heroes of the exhibition.
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