Stavros Niarchos

Stavros Spyros Niarchos ( Greek Σταύρος Σπύρος Νιάρχος , born July 3, 1909 in Athens , † April 16, 1996 in Zurich ) was a Greek shipowner and art collector. In 2016 the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center was opened in Kallithea, near Athens.

Life

youth

His father Spyros Niarchos and his mother Eugenia Coumandaros came from a small village near Sparta . Niarchos grew up in a middle-class family in Athens and graduated from high school there. He then studied law at the university in his hometown, received his doctorate in 1939 and initially took up a position in his uncle's company. A few months later, however, Niarchos started his own business as a shipowner. He had realized that the transport costs for transporting wheat from Argentina and the USSR abroad were too high and was able to successfully get into this business with cheaper prices.

Second World War

During the Second World War from 1941 to 1945 Niarchos was an officer in the Greek Navy on a destroyer. Around the same time he was an honorary naval attaché at the Greek embassy in Washington . This is also where his plan for the time after the war came about.

Business life

From 1945 Niarchos bought disused merchant ships and mainly tankers of the US Navy . As compensation for the war-related loss of his pre-war fleet, he was granted low prices; he let the ships sail the oceans under flags of convenience. US ports, however, were not allowed to be called. After the first business successes, which were mainly triggered by the Korean War and the Suez Crisis , he had the first supertankers built and acquired the largest dry dock in the Mediterranean , the Hellenic Shipyards . At the height of its economic power, Niarchos owned over 80 tankers.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Niarchos was one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world as a shipowner. The greatest competitor and at the same time a role model was his brother-in-law, Aristotle Onassis , whose first wife (the sister of his own third wife) Niarchos later married himself. With his then-brothers-in-law Onassis and Georgos Livanos , who also worked as a shipowner, Niarchos was one of the richest men in the world.

In contrast to competitors such as the Norwegian Hilmar Reksten or Ravi N. Tikkoo, Stavros Niarchos as well as Onassis relied on a conservative and non-risky business strategy: he only had ships built after long-term, if not very profitable, transport contracts were concluded. The growth in wealth was therefore comparatively modest.

Niarchos worked closely with the US CIA and was able to obtain various economic benefits after the junta came to power in Greece . Because of this role he got into distress after the end of the dictatorship and agreed to sell the stake in a refinery, which was valued at $ 121 million, to the Greek state for $ 12.4 million. The state had previously made claims totaling $ 63 million.

In the 1970s he suffered heavy losses due to the oil crisis and the lull in the tanker market, which forced him to sell various ships and docks.

In the 1990s he largely withdrew from business life and lived mostly in St. Moritz , Switzerland. There he invested a large part of his assets in traditional businesses such as hotels and cable cars, also with the aim of protecting them from being sold to large chains.

Niarchos died in Zurich at the age of 86. The Stavros Niarchos Foundation has managed a large part of his assets since 1996 and supports social and cultural projects around the world, particularly in the areas of education and health. One focus of the foundation's activities is on promoting programs in Switzerland and Greece.

Private life

Niarchos was married a total of five times and had five children.

His third marriage was with Eugenia Livanos (1927-1970), daughter of the Greek shipowner Stavros Livanos. With her he had the sons Philippos, Spyros and Konstantin, who died of a cocaine overdose in 1999 , and his daughter Maria. However, he divorced Livanos and then married Charlotte Ford, daughter of Henry Ford II . With her he had a daughter, Elena Ford. However, this relationship did not last either, so he returned to Eugenia Livanos; they committed in 1970 in suicide . In 1971 Niarchos married Athena Spencer-Churchill (1926–1974), born as Athina Livanos, who was the sister of his third wife and the ex-wife of both Aristotle Onassis and John Spencer-Churchill, 11th Duke of Marlborough . She also committed suicide.

Stavros Niarchos was a royalist and supported the Greek royal family even after the end of the monarchy. Alexander Prince of Yugoslavia was one of his employees .

His favorite hobby was skiing, which is why he got involved in Switzerland and retired there entirely when he was old. In 1959 he built a new ski lift near St. Moritz, which for the first time made year-round skiing possible there, and employed Edy Reinalter as a private ski instructor until his death in 1962.

When Niarchos accidentally crossed the border to Austria while skiing and wanted to be picked up by his helicopter near Spiss (Tyrol) , he was arrested for illegally crossing the border and smuggling helicopters. When Niarchos was able to prove that the border markings were not visible and inadequate, the investigation was discontinued and the bail of 209,000.18 schillings was returned.

Niarchos was privately considered to be very generous, he gave a Madrid waiter a tip of 740 marks after a bill of 140 marks. In business he was considered very economical, due to the high diesel consumption he parted with his private yacht in 1962, a change of the engines had not previously brought the hoped-for savings.

Niarchos as an art collector

The riders on the beach at Gauguin		van Gogh, portrait of the old farmer Patience Escalier

Until the late 1950s, Niarchos mainly collected works of Impressionism , in 1956 he acquired the famous collection of Edward G. Robinson . In 1958 the Tate Gallery dedicated an exhibition to his collection. After collecting a few hundred works, he turned to early modern art and some masters such as Van Gogh , Goya , El Greco and Rubens .

His purchase of Pablo Picasso's self-portrait " Yo Picasso " for $ 47,850,000 in 1989 attracted attention . The collection, which today belongs to the Niarchos family, is counted among the 10 most important private collections in the world. Since 2005 the Kunsthaus Zürich has been given a part on permanent loan.

Well-known works from the collection

• Paul Gauguin : The Riders on the Beach (1902), is one of the five most important paintings in private hands
• Van Gogh : Père Tanguy (1887)
• Van Gogh: Portrait of the old farmer Patience Escalier (1888)
• Henri Matisse : La Desserte (1897)

He donated part of his collection to the Louvre.

Niarchos also collected ancient art, for example in 1980 he acquired the Northampton amphora . This part of his collection was exhibited in Athens in 1995.

Trivia

His grandson of the same name gained notoriety after temporarily dating Paris Hilton , Lindsay Lohan and Mary-Kate Olsen .

literature

• The Arts Council: The Niarchos collection of paintings , 1958

Web links

• Biography (English)
• Niarchos group of companies
• Information on Stavros Niarchos at switzerland.isyours.com
• Who's who

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Norway: Doubly embarrassing . In: Der Spiegel . No. 35 , 1979, pp. 126 ( Online - Aug. 27, 1979 ).
2. ^ Shipowner: Communist Vendetta . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 1977, pp. 137-138 ( Online - Mar. 14, 1977 ).
3. ^ Greece: Socialism from the right . In: Der Spiegel . No. 52 , 1976, p. 100-103 ( online - 20 December 1976 ).
4. ↑ ^{a b} The discreet work of the Niarchos family , in Neue Zürcher Zeitung , on December 29, 2008. Retrieved on December 29, 2009.
5. ↑ Stavros Niarchos . In: Der Spiegel . No. 43 , 1959, pp. 95 ( online - 21 October 1959 ).
6. ↑ Stavros Niarchos . In: Der Spiegel . No. 6 , 1963, pp. 83 ( Online - February 6, 1963 ).
7. ↑ Stavros Niarchos . In: Der Spiegel . No. 21 , 1971, p. 187 ( online - May 17, 1971 ).
8. ↑ Stavros Niarchos . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1963, pp. 126 ( Online - Nov. 13, 1963 ).
9. ↑ Stavros Niarchos . In: Der Spiegel . No. 30 , 1962, pp. 64 ( online - 25 July 1962 ).
10. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from September 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
11. ↑ http://www.theartwolf.com/articles/best-private-art-collections.htm
12. ^ Stefan Koldehoff: Zurich Museum expands entrée to Niarchos Collection . Art news . July 19, 2005. Retrieved September 18, 2014.
13. ↑ theartwolf.com: The most important paintings in private hands
14. ↑ (La Collection Puiforcat. Donation de Stavros S. Niarchos au département des objets d'art: orfèvrerie du XVIIe au XIXe siècle).
15. ↑ Lilia Marangou: Ancient Greek art from the collection of Stavros S. Niarchos. Athens 1995. ISBN 960-7064-13-5 .