German-American art collector-dealer Heinz Berggruen amassed an exceptional collection, including works by twentieth-century masters Picasso, Klee, Matisse, and Giacometti.
Heinz Berggruen’s collection―with more than one hundred masterpieces by Picasso, Klee, Matisse, and Giacometti―is a spectacular tribute to the foresight of this major player in the international art market during the second half of the twentieth century. Born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1914, he went into exile in California on the eve of World War II. He became art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and assistant to the director of the San Francisco MoMA. After the war, Berggruen returned to Europe, first to Munich as a journalist, then to Paris where he worked at the UNESCO headquarters before becoming an art dealer specialized in the graphic works of modern artists. He quickly established contacts within the Parisian cultural scene, meeting both the artists he would represent and the poets, dealers, historians, critics, and collectors of the day. Guided by his personal tastes, he built a remarkable collection of twentieth-century works spanning the entire careers of Picasso and Klee and including Matisse’s collages and Giacometti’s sculptures.
