At the Orangerie Museum, shadows and lights from the Berggruen collection

Heinz Berggruen (1914-2007) was one of the leading dealers in modern art from the 1950s to the 1970s. His gallery, rue de l’Université, in Paris, did not have the monumental dimensions that are today the rule, but we saw rarities there. One of his last exhibitions, in 1981, was devoted to works on paper from Picasso’s last decade, a period then maligned.

But Berggruen was also an obstinate collector, as can be seen in Berlin, in the museum he founded there and which was acquired by the German state in 2000. It is now under construction and his works are circulating. The exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie, “Heinz Berggruen, a merchant and his collection”, which opened on October 2 in Paris, is one of the stops on this world tour.

It presents just under a hundred works. In chronological order of authors: Cézanne, Matisse, Klee, Picasso, Braque and Giacometti. In terms of quantities, Picasso dominates by far. Famous paintings by these famous artists alternate with other lesser-known paintings by the same artists, which are no less interesting, if not more so because of their lesser notoriety. The hanging is elegant, in a white architecture which favors through-views and visual connections between, for example, a cut-out blue gouache nude by Matisse and a small sculpture by Picasso. It is thus a very luxurious exhibition, which celebrates the eye of a great connoisseur.

Cubism, his great passion

Born in 1914 into a Jewish middle-class family in Berlin, Heinz Berggruen studied literature and journalism in this city, then in France. Forced to flee the III^e Reich, he emigrated to California in 1936 on a scholarship to the University of Berkeley, then worked at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He fought in the US Army and was responsible, in 1945, for creating a magazine which would be, in Germany liberated from Nazism, a sort of Life. But he preferred, to this task, to write about contemporary art and, soon, to sell it. In 1947, he opened a first gallery in Paris, Place Dauphine, which was bought from him in 1949 by neighbors wanting to expand, the couple Simone Signoret-Yves Montand. He then moved to Rue de l’Université, where he remained until his retirement.

He carries out two activities simultaneously, one of which finances the other. One is to buy, exhibit and sell. The other is buying and not selling. The first is banal. Like any gallery owner, Heinz Berggruen chooses artists, organizes presentations, publishes catalogs (small and graceful) and sells. This part of his life is only visible in the exhibition in the last room, suggested by posters and catalogs. If several are devoted to Picasso and Klee, others defend Tapies, Poliakoff or Soulages. The eclecticism of the programming does not respond to clear preferences, but rather to a pragmatism, obviously effective since it allows Berggruen to continue his other work, to constitute a coherent collection of the artists who are dear to him: the heroes of the exhibition.

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