Heinz Berggruen

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Heinz Berggruen, 2002

Heinz Berggruen (January 5, 1914 - February 23, 2007) was a German art dealer and collector who founded the Berggruen Museum ^[1] in Berlin, Germany.

He was born in Berlin on 5 January 1914 and died in Paris on 23 February 2007. He immigrated to the United States in 1936 and studied at Berkeley University. In 1939 he became an "Assistant director" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In preparing an exhibition about the Mexican painter Diego Rivera he met Frida Kahlo, too, and had a short love affair with her.

After the Second World War he got acquainted with Pablo Picasso in Paris, who spontaneously had confidence in Berggruen and so he became Picasso's art dealer. In 1996, after 60 years in exile, he returned to Germany and opened an art museum in front of the Charlottenburg Palace. Berggruen left his precious art collection in a generous gesture of a low price to the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. For this he was awarded the honorary citizenship of Berlin and the Federal Cross of Merit (Grand Cross 2nd Class) of Germany (Bundesverdienstkreuz, Großes Verdienstkreuz mit Stern und Schulterband).

Berggruen's children include John Berggruen, owner of the John Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco; Olivier Berggruen, curator at the Kunsthalle called Schirn in Frankfurt; and Nicolas Berggruen, a self-made multi-billionaire known for an eccentric and generally low-key lifestyle, with few personal possessions, he has no immediate family, home or car.^[2]