Barbara Piasecka Johnson

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Barbara Piasecka Johnson (born February 25, 1937 in Staniewicze near Hrodna , Poland (now Belarus); † April 1, 2013 in Sobótka ) was a Polish-American art collector and philanthropist. By inheritance, she was one of the richest women in the world. Her extensive art collection included important works from the Renaissance and Baroque periods . The foundation she established cares for young people with autism .

Life

Barbara Piasecka was born in 1937 in the then Polish town of Staniewicze (now Belarus) as the child of a farmer. After finishing school, she studied art history at the University of Wroclaw . In 1968 she emigrated to the United States after studying in Rome. Here she got a job in Oldwick (New Jersey) as a cook and chambermaid for J. Seward Johnson and his second wife Esther Underwood. Johnson was a longtime director and co-owner of the pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson . After nine months, she left the Johnson household and moved into an apartment in New York City rented by Mr. Johnson.

Johnson divorced his second wife in 1971 and married Barbara Piasecka a week later. None of his six children were present at the wedding of the then 76-year-old Johnson to Piasecka, who was 32 years his junior. The couple had a large country estate called Jasna Polana built on the outskirts of Princeton, New Jersey . In the following years, the couple devoted themselves, among other things, to building up an extensive art collection. They also founded the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Foundation in 1974, which initially supported Polish students in the United States and various charitable initiatives in Poland. In 1983 J. Seward Johnson died and his now grown-up children had a legal dispute over several years with Barbara Piasecka Johnson over the inheritance. Barbara Piasecka Johnson was ultimately awarded $ 350 million of the estate of around 500 million US dollars. In 2013 Forbes Magazine estimated her fortune at $ 3.6 billion.

After the death of her husband, Barbara Piasecka Johnson settled in Monaco . The professional golfer Gary Player transformed her property Jasna Polana in New Jersey into a golf club. Your foundation has had a branch in Poland under the name Fundację Barbary Piaseckiej Johnson since 1992 . The foundation primarily cares for children and young adults with autism . It also financed the construction of the Institute for Child Development in Gdansk . Barbara Piasecka Johnson died in Sobótka in 2013 and was buried in a cemetery in Wroclaw.

Art collection

The exact size of Barbara Piasecka Johnson's art collection is unknown. In 1990 she presented to the public for the first time a selection of her collection with 50 paintings, 30 sculptures and handicrafts with religious subjects under the title Opus Sacrum in the Warsaw Royal Castle . These included works from the Renaissance and Baroque periods by artists such as Fra Angelico , Filippo Lippi , Andrea Mantegna , Sandro Botticelli , Leonardo da Vinci , Giorgione , Lucas Cranach the Elder , El Greco , Jusepe de Ribera , Francisco de Zurbarán , Caravaggio , Domenichino , Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Vermeer . A selection of 87 old master drawings followed in 2010/2011, including works by Raffael , Leonardo da Vinci and Sandro Botticelli.

  • Jacopo Tintoretto:
    The Siege of Asola

  • Jan Vermeer:
    The holy praxedis

  • Andrea Mantegna:
    Christ's Descent into Hell

  • Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio:
    The Sacrifice of Isaac

The first notable acquisition of a work of art was in 1972 the purchase of the painting Madonna and Child, Saint Anna and John the Baptist as a child, ascribed to Agnolo Bronzino . Such old master paintings remained the exception at first. Instead, the Johnsons acquired 19th and 20th century paintings from artists such as Piet Mondrian , Claude Monet , Edgar Degas , Pierre-Auguste Renoir , Vincent van Gogh , Paul Gauguin , Henri Matisse , Pablo Picasso , Georges Braque , Fernand Léger , Amedeo Modigliani or Wassily Kandinsky and sculptures by Hans Arp , Auguste Rodin and Constantin Brâncuși . In addition, they acquired numerous works by Polish artists of the 19th century, including works by Piotr Michałowski , Henryk Rodakowski , Henryk Siemiradzki , Artur Grottger , Jan Matejko , Ludomir Sleńdziński , Józef Chełmoński and Olga Boznańska . Many of these early acquisitions were sold by the collectors a few years later. These included, for example, Am Brunnen by Henryk Siemiradzki, Le disque rouge by Fernand Léger or Maternite II by Paul Gauguin.

  • Henryk Siemiradzki:
    At the well

  • Paul Gauguin:
    Maternite II

  • Annibale Carracci:
    Portrait of a man with a white collar

  • Rembrandt:
    A man with his arms on his hips

Towards the end of the 1970s, the collector couple devoted themselves increasingly to the purchase of old master paintings. This included, for example, works by Velázquez , François Boucher and Nicolas Poussin . One of the highlights of the collection was the painting A Man with Arms on the Waist by Rembrandt, acquired by New York's Columbia University in 1974 . In addition, they built up an extensive collection of handicrafts. They were advised, among others, by the art historian and former director of the Victoria and Albert Museum John Pope-Hennessy .

After the death of her husband in 1983, Barbara Piasecka-Johnson continued to expand the collection. The most important acquisitions of this period include Vermeer's The Holy Praxedis , Christ on the Cross by El Geco, Mantegna's Descent into Hell and Caravaggio's The Sacrifice of Isaac . The acquisition of the Badminton Cabinet , a Florentine state cabinet owned by the Duke of Beaufort , also caused a stir . At $ 15 million, it was the highest price ever paid for a piece of furniture at auction. In 2004 she had the cabinet auctioned off again at Christie's . Liechtenstein Prince Hans-Adam II acquired the piece of furniture for the new record price of 36.7 million US dollars .

In the last years of her life, the collector sold other pieces from her collection. In 2003 she had Mantegna Hell's Journey auctioned at Sotheby’s for $ 28.5 million. In July 2009, she put 55 Renaissance and Baroque works up for auction, followed by another auction of 144 pieces of handicrafts and furniture. In December of that year, Christie's Rembrandts A Man with Arms on Hips went up for auction. The painting went to hotel and casino entrepreneur Steve Wynn for the record price of 32.9 million US dollars .

Barbara Piasecka Johnson made Flemish tapestries and the monumental painting The Siege of Asola by Jacopo Tintoretto available on permanent loan to the National Museum in Poznan . Further permanent loans were in Monaco in the Musée de la Chapelle de la Visitation . In addition, she repeatedly loaned individual works to art exhibitions. So she temporarily left Mantegna's Descent into Hell to the New York Frick Collection and in 2011 loaned the painting The Sacrifice of Isaac, attributed to Caravaggio to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa . Plans to set up an art museum in Princeton came to nothing, as did the renovation of the Poznan residential palace to permanently accommodate the collection. After the death of Barbara Piasecka Johnson, several objects from the collection were put up for auction at Christie's auction house in London in July 2014. These included the paintings The Martyrdom of St. Bartholomew by Luca Giordano , Christ at the Column by Domenichino , The Siege of Asola by Jacopo Tintoretto and The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian by Francisco de Zurbarán . The top lot of the auction, the painting The Holy Praxedis Vermeer, changed hands for 6,242,000 pounds sterling the owner. The proceeds of the auction are intended for the foundation of the deceased.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In the list of the richest people published by Forbes magazine in March 2013, Barbara Piasecka Johnson took 367th place, see http://www.forbes.com/profile/barbara-piasecka-johnson/
  2. ↑ Christie's press release on the auctioning of parts of the Barbara Piasecka Johnson collection
  3. ↑ "Heilige Praxedis" in London succeeds 6.242 million pounds , at: wn.com
personal data
SURNAME Piasecka Johnson, Barbara
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Piasecka, Barbara
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-American art collector and philanthropist
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1937
PLACE OF BIRTH Staniewicze
DATE OF DEATH April 1, 2013
Place of death Sobotka