Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kaszon, Hans Heinrich, Baron

▪ 2003

      Dutch-born Swiss industrialist and art collector (b. April 13, 1921, Scheveningen, Neth.—d. April 27, 2002, Sant Feliu de Guixols, Spain), amassed one of the world's most extensive and valuable private art collections while expanding his family's World War II-ravaged business conglomerate into a multibillion-dollar global empire. Thyssen-Bornemisza attended the University of Fribourg, Switz., and was put in charge of his father's German-based companies in 1944. When his father died (1947), Thyssen-Bornemisza inherited the title (derived from his maternal grandfather), the badly damaged business holdings, and a share of his father's art collection, much of which had been acquired for bargain prices during the Depression. Thyssen-Bornemisza quickly gained a reputation as a sharp businessman, a society jet-setter, and a voracious collector. When the Swiss government refused to finance expansion of the family's private museum at Villa Favorita on Lake Lugano, he sought a new home for his vast accumulation, which ranged from medieval tapestries to modern sculpture and included hundreds of priceless paintings by artists as diverse as El Greco, Canaletto, Hans Holbein, Claude Monet, Edvard Munch, Winslow Homer, Jackson Pollack, and Andy Warhol. In 1988, despite heated bids from several other countries, he negotiated a controversial deal with Spain (the homeland of his fifth wife). The Spanish government agreed to purchase the majority of the collection for a reported $350 million, a fraction of its true value. In 1992 the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, housing more than 800 artworks, opened to the public in Madrid, while other works were housed in a nearby renovated 14th-century monastery.

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