1. Heinz Berggruen was a German and American art dealer and collector who sold 165 works of art to the German federal government to form the core of the Berggruen Museum in Berlin, Germany.
13 Facts About Heinz Berggruen
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Heinz Berggruen was the father of John, Olivier and Nicolas Berggruen.
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Heinz Berggruen attended the Goethe-Gymnasium in Wilmersdorf and graduated from the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in 1932, where he read literature.
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Heinz Berggruen contributed free-lance articles to the Frankfurter Zeitung, the forerunner of today's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
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Heinz Berggruen immigrated to the United States in 1936 and studied German literature at University of California, Berkeley.
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Heinz Berggruen then moved to Paris, where he worked in the fine arts division of UNESCO, run by his former boss at the San Francisco museum, Grace Morley.
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Heinz Berggruen soon became an important dealer in Picasso prints, as well as in second-hand Picasso paintings.
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Heinz Berggruen's renowned art collection, which he valued at $450 million in 2001, included 165 works by 20th-century masters such as Braque, Matisse, Klee, and Giacometti, with a unique group of 85 works by Picasso.
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In 1977, Heinz Berggruen published Douglas Cooper's catalogue raisonne of Juan Gris.
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Heinz Berggruen finally resigned as director of the Paris gallery in 1980 in order to devote himself to collecting and dealing.
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Heinz Berggruen additionally received the Jewish Museum Berlin's Award for Understanding and Tolerance in 2005, and was bestowed an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Adelphi University in 1993.
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Heinz Berggruen died at the American Hospital of Paris in Neuilly-sur-Seine on 23 February 2007.
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Heinz Berggruen's funeral was attended by German chancellor Angela Merkel, and then-president Horst Kohler, among others.