John Henry Berggruen was born on June 18,1943 and is an American art dealer who owns Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco, California, which has been a fixture in the Bay Area art scene since 1970.
13 Facts About John Berggruen
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John Berggruen's parents divorced in 1945, and Heinz moved back to Europe.
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John Berggruen started his career in politics, working for the Democratic party while attending college.
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John Berggruen graduated from San Francisco State University in 1966 and took an impromptu trip to Paris after graduation, in part to get to know his father, who operated a gallery there.
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John Berggruen was introduced to the work of Alexander Calder while working for the Perls Galleries.
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At age 27, John Berggruen moved back to San Francisco and decided to open his own gallery in May 1970 in a second floor walk-up at 257 Grant Avenue with $5,000 worth of Joan Miro prints lent to him on consignment from his father.
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John Berggruen moved the gallery across the street to 228 Grant Avenue two years later and remained there for 43 years.
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In 2017 John Berggruen reopened in an historic building with 10,000 square feet of exhibition space in San Francisco's South of Market District, directly across the street from the newly expanded San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
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John Berggruen is known is known for exhibiting and selling works by Californian artists, Wayne Thiebaud, Richard Diebenkorn, and Ed Ruscha, as well as other artists associated with the Bay Area Figurative Movement such as Nathan Oliveira, Elmer Bischoff, Paul Wonner, and David Park.
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John Berggruen has played an instrumental role in developing several notable private and institutional collections on the West Coast by introducing these collectors to important artists, as well as helping to launch the careers of then-emerging artists, including Tom Sachs, Barry McGee, Lorna Simpson, and Jennifer Bartlett.
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John Berggruen has exhibited work by such influential artists as Georgia O'Keeffe, Philip Guston, Mark Tansey, Joseph Cornell, Ellsworth Kelly, Claes Oldenburg, Frank Stella, Jim Dine, Alexander Calder, and Henry Moore.
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John Berggruen married his wife Gretchen John Berggruen in 1985 after having worked together at the gallery for nine years.
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John Berggruen serves on the board of the John Berggruen Museum in Berlin.