Daniel Filipacchi
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| Daniel Filipacchi | |
 Filipacchi in 1958
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| Born | 1928 Paris, France |
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| Children | Mimi, Craig, and Amanda Filipacchi |
Daniel Filipacchi (born 1928, in Paris, France) is the Chairman Emeritus of Hachette Filipacchi Médias.
His life and career have been noted for his passionate involvement in art collecting, photography, and jazz. In France, he is widely remembered as the host of the highly popular 1960's radio music show “Salut les Copains", and the former photographer who bought the struggling Paris Match magazine and transformed it into one of France's best-loved and most successful publications. Throughout the years that he expanded the Hachette Filipacchi media empire, he was recognized as one of the world's foremost experts in--and collectors of--Surrealist art. His collection was given a major exhibit at the Guggenheim in New York in 1999.
[edit] Life
Born in Paris, France in 1928, Daniel Filipacchi attended French public school until the Second World War interrupted his studies at the age of thirteen--after which point he never went to school again and was completely self-educated. At thirteen, he became an apprentice typesetter in a printing-house which specialized in clandestine editions. He typeset, among other works, poems by Paul Eluard.
At the end of the war, having developed an interest in photography, he started working as a freelance photographer for tabloids and Paris Match magazine.
Recognized as an expert in jazz, he was recruited at the age of twenty-seven to host a radio show the day of the death of Charlie Parker in 1955. The show was so successful that he was asked to host a daily radio jazz show with his friend, Franck Ténot. Because of that show's success, he decided to buy Jazz Magazine, which was the start of their publishing group.
Filipacchi and Ténot organized tours, in France and Europe, of all the great jazz musicians: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Erroll Garner, Thelonious Monk, Mahalia Jackson, among others. At the same time, he was a record producer and A & R representative for RCA. He founded Mood Records, and in 1970 he was the founder and president of Warner (France).
In the 60s, he decided to create and host a rock and roll radio show modeled after “Dick Clark's American Bandstand,” and called “Salut Les Copains.” The show was such a huge success that he decided to launch a magazine of the same name, which quickly built a circulation of one million copies. He then launched many other magazines (and acquired several others). Some were for teenage girls (such as Mademoiselle Age Tendre); some for men (such as Lui, Newlook, and French editions of Playboy and Penthouse); and some were special interest magazines (such as Ski, Son (Sound), Photo, Union, Mer Et Moteur (Boating), Decoration, Cuisine (Cooking)).
In 1976 Filipacchi purchased the ailing Paris Match, and turned it into one of France's most successful and influential magazines.
As a book publisher, his interest in Surrealism led him to publish books on many artists (in many cases they were the first books on these artists): Dali, Magritte, Max Ernst, Tanguy, Dorothea Tanning, Joseph Cornell, Hans Bellmer, Wolfgang Pallen, Toyen, Andre Masson, Man Ray, de Chirico, and others. Several of these artists attended dinner parties at his apartment in Paris. He accumulated many works by all the Surrealists, and in the case of Joseph Cornell, amassed the world's largest private collection of Cornell boxes.
In 1981, with his friend Jean-Luc Lagardère, he purchased Hachette magazines, which included the French TV Guide (Tele 7 Jours), and the then-struggling Elle magazine. Elle was then launched in the U.S., followed by 25 foreign editions. Filipacchi and Lagardère then expanded Hachette Filipacchi Magazines in the U.S. with the purchase of Diamandis Communications Inc. (formerly CBS magazines), including Woman's Day, Car and Driver, Road and Track, Flying, Boating, and many others.
For many years ARTnews has been listing Filipacchi among the world's top art collectors. His collection (along with that of his best friend, the late Nesuhi Ertegün's) was exhibited at the Guggenheim in New York in 1999 in “Surrealism: Two Private Eyes, the Nesuhi Ertegun and Daniel Filipacchi Collections”--an event described by The New York Times as: “a gourmet banquet,” large enough to “pack the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum from ceiling to lobby with a powerful exhibition.” [1]
He has three children, Craig, Mimi and the American novelist Amanda Filipacchi.
[edit] References
- Madjar, Robert (1997). Daniel Filipacchi. Editions Michel Lafon
- Guggenheim Museum Publications (1999). Surrealism: Two Private Eyes, the Nesuhi Ertegun and Daniel Filipacchi Collections. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York.
