Francesca Thyssen "Lack of confidence in the Thyssen board of trustees"
An aristocrat and sagacious businessman, Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza created
one of the most important art collections in the world while still
alive.
.
Next week he would have turned 100 and today his paintings, which now belong to Spain, serve to decipher a man whose greatest passion was art.
"We have an image of the baron a bit distant, an aristocratic person, but in reality he was quite a close person, even shy. He was passionate, intuitive and not at all dogmatic," recalls Juan Ángel López-Manzanares, curator of the Thyssen Museum and curator of the centenary of the baron.
This week the museum is decked out to celebrate the centenary of its founder, which takes place on Tuesday, April 13.
Classical music concerts, conferences and open houses commemorate the anniversary in a year dull by the pandemic and which coincides with the expansion of negotiations for the loan of the collection of his widow, Carmen Thyssen.
The collection that Heinrich Thyssen sold to Spain in the 90s consisted of around 800 works and is a whole journey through the history of art.
Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Dürer or Carpaccio
rub shoulders with
Van Gogh, Degas, Picasso, Hopper or Freud
in their corridors
.
All of them, in addition to making up one of the most important collections in the world, serve to decipher the personality of the baron, explains López-Manzanares: he himself chose the works, he did not allow himself to be advised;
And he was very audacious, he could pursue a work that interested him for years, as is the case with several of the museum pieces.
"The great passion of his life was painting - says the expert -. In his memoirs he says that it helped him overcome both emotional and corporate setbacks."
The collection of the Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (Netherlands, 1921-Spain, 2002), which his relatives called Heini, is also that of his father and his grandfather.
In 1947, he inherited a large part of the family collection and, at first, following in his father's footsteps, he increased it with great old masters:
"For his father, after Goya there was nothing of value
.
"
In the 1960s, he took "a step forward" and began to print his personality by buying the work of contemporary authors.
The first purchases were from German Expressionists, a generation persecuted by Nazism to whom he was attracted politically, "even before appreciating them aesthetically," as he used to say.
The 23-year-old baron received a family emporium decimated by World War II, and spent almost a decade building it up with considerable success.
In his memoirs, the baron acknowledges that as a young man he was not interested in art, but in 1939 he arrived at Villa Favorita, fleeing the Second World War and there he
found calm and refuge in the contemplation of the paintings
in his father's collection.
"The baron grew as a person through his contact with art - he points out - it is as if his relationship with painting was modeling him".
He had a very good eye, the two views of Canaletto's Venice that are on display in the museum he bought without being attributed to the painter yet, but he knew they were good.
Once the companies went well and they no longer required so much time, in the 70s, he dedicated himself exclusively to his collection.
There were years when he bought "in a frenzy", up to 100 works a year
.
He was always looking for the best work, sometimes he could follow a piece for years or buy a work by an artist and if he found a better one, he would sell it to get the new one.
The Virgin of the Dry Tree
, for example, belonged to her aunt Amelie, who promised her the painting, but ended up selling it to Konrad Adenauer.
He kept track of the play, and many years later, when the German Chancellor had gotten rid of it, he bought it.
"Painting was what put the rest of the facets of his life into perspective, what gave him true value in his life, it was what excited him and excited him," the expert explained to Efe.
By the 1980s, the collection had gained international weight and relevance.
The baron begins to worry about the fate of his works,
he does not want her to be disintegrated among his heirs -he has five children-
, so he looks for a place in which to locate her and remain united after her death.
Countries and institutions around the world court him, from the Guetty Foundation in the United States, England or Germany, but finally the agreement reaches Spain.
"It is difficult that the collection would have come to Spain if it had not been for Carmen Cervera"
, explains the curator.
One of the fundamental aspects that tipped the balance was also that the Government of Felipe González offered the Villahermosa Palace in front of the Prado Museum.
The museum now displays the Baron's collection, owned by the state, and that of his widow, the Carmen Thyssen collection, on loan.
"The two collections complement each other perfectly and
the logical thing is that the two are exhibited one next to the other
. The mark of the baron is in all the works of the Carmen Thyssen Collection", assures the curator.
In 2017, the museum reached an agreement with the contemporary art foundation of Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza, one of his daughters: "It is a way for the museum to be up-to-date, in renovation and in contact with its moment, as was the baron ".
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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