Theodor Ahrenberg

Theodor Ahrenberg

Theodor "Teto" Ahrenberg (born March 2, 1912 in Gothenburg , † June 21, 1989 in Vevey , Switzerland ) was a successful Swedish entrepreneur and art collector . His extensive collection included works by influential and diverse artists and the like. a. Pablo Picasso , Henri Matisse , Marc Chagall , Le Corbusier , Olle Bærtling , Sam Francis , Mark Tobey , Christo , Lucio Fontana , Tadeusz Kantor , Enrico Baj , Jean Tinguely and Niki de Saint Phalle . The most important exhibits in the collection included the two versions of Matisse ' Apollo (1953), Picasso's Femme nue au fauteuil à bascule (1956) and Chagall's Les mariés sous le baldaquin (1949).

Life

Theodor Ahrenberg, son of the Swedish shipowner and owner of Th. Ahrenberg Rederi (Th. Ahrenberg Reederei) and his wife Naëma Ahrenberg (née Wijkander), known by friends as "Teto", spent his youth in Gothenburg ; the family house was at Viktor Rydbergsgatan 14. After his unsuccessful school days, Ahrenberg was taken from the Högre Samskola School by his father. He then worked for various shipyards and shipping companies in Stettin, Hamburg and Newcastle. As Ahrenberg writes in his memoir, this training was decisive for him: “You have to be far-sighted, careful and courageous at the same time ... above all, you have to be successful. That was the attraction of the world of shipping companies. Such speculative and courageous experiences shaped me a lot with regard to my entry into the art world. ”1939-40 Ahrenberg fought as a volunteer soldier in the winter war against Russia and was highly decorated.

After returning to Gothenburg in 1941 and due to the decline of Th. Ahrenberg Reederei, Ahrenberg moved to Stockholm to advance his career. First he was responsible for the inventory of the barrels at Nynäs Petroleum, then he received a higher position at the Trade and Economic Commission. Finally, he took on a leading management position at the Economic Association for Gas and Coke (GOKEF).

On business trips through Europe from the late 1940s onwards, Ahrenberg discovered his love for modern art and began collecting works by contemporary artists, initially acquiring prints, including works by Picasso. Over time, he created one of the most important and best European private collections of 20th century Western art.

In the early 1950s, the founder and director of the Samlaren gallery (Birger Jarlsgatan 1, Stockholm), Agnes Widlund (1910–2005), began advising Ahrenberg. With their help, he supplemented his collection with works by important artists such as Matisse, Chagall, Le Corbusier, Georges Braque and Georges Rouault . In addition, Widlund Ahrenberg arranged studio visits to artists such as Picasso, Matisse, Chagall and Le Corbusier. So began his passion to get to know artists personally and to purchase exhibits directly from the artists.

Ahrenberg became a central figure in the Swedish and European art world. Among other things, he was secretary of the Ticino Society and board member of art associations such as Friends of the National Museum, Friends of the Moderna Museets and Aspect. He worked hard to improve the situation of art students and young artists. On September 3, 1959, Ahrenberg gave his controversial speech “The Poverty of Art in the Welfare State” at the Aspect public gathering at Stockholm's Academy of Arts , in which he called for further support for artists and art institutions and appointed the director of the Swedish National Museum Carl Nordenfalk (1907 –92) criticized its reluctant financing methods. In the process, Ahrenberg collided with the conservatism of state art funding and the art business of public museums in his home country .

Ahrenberg's rift with the museum scene, especially with Nordenfalk, who refused his proposal in December 1959 to leave his collection to the National Museum or another state institution, led to the decision to set up his own exhibition pavilion in Stockholm under the name “Palais Ahrenberg” to build. In 1961, Ahrenberg's friend, the architect Le Corbusier (1887–1965), promised to draw up the plans for it. These were presented to the public in early 1962, but the pavilion was not built. Le Corbusier was based on a design that he had created two years earlier for a similar project in Tokyo and used in 1964 to build the Heidi Weber Museum in Zurich, also known as the “Center Le Corbusier”. A model of the "Palais Ahrenberg" designed according to the original plans has been located there since 2005.

Ahrenberg's domicile "Le Rocher" near Chexbres

In the planning phase of this exhibition center Ahrenberg 1962, during a Switzerland -Aufenthaltes, of the Swedish prosecutor's office because of tax charged. Since he had to reckon with pre-trial detention on his return to Sweden , he stayed in Switzerland with his wife Ulla (born Ulla Frisell in 1931) and their four children. To settle his tax debts, the Swedish state confiscated his art collection and auctioned it off from 1963. Theodor Ahrenberg and his family settled in the small town of Chexbres on the north shore of Lake Geneva , where he started collecting again. He maintained contacts with numerous artists of the European post-war avant-garde and invited them to work in his villa for several months. In this way, the second Ahrenberg collection was created over the next 25 years.

Theodor Ahrenberg died on June 21, 1989 at the age of 77 in Vevey, Switzerland.

The first collection

The first Ahrenberg collection, confiscated by the Swedish state and dispersed through auctioning, one of the most extensive private collections in Europe, offered a comprehensive cross-section of " Classical Modernism " with around 1,000 works .

Ahrenberg valued and acquired works by famous or at least well-known contemporary artists such as Henri Matisse (1869–1954), Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Georges Braque (1882–1963), Marc Chagall (1887–1985), Le Corbusier (1887) –1965), Fernand Léger (1881–1955), Alberto Giacometti (1901–66), Henry Moore (1898–1986), Mark Tobey (1890–1976) and others, some of whom were not yet accepted by the art establishment and the financial world . According to his wife, Ulla Ahrenberg, Ahrenberg owned hundreds of works by Picasso and almost all of Matisse's sculptures prior to the expropriation of the collection by the Swedish state.

In his home country he promoted controversial young Swedish artists such as Carl Kylberg, Olle Bærtling , Einar Hylander, Öyvind Fahlström , Richard Mortensen , Robert Jacobsen and Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd .

Another focus of his collecting activity was on the works of Eastern European artists who had to work underground behind the Iron Curtain . The most important representative of this group was Tadeusz Kantor . With his weakness for the avant-garde new artists of the time, Ahrenberg offended almost everywhere in the conservative Swedish art scene.

His passion for collecting benefited from the fact that he could buy the works of the then not yet established artists at low market prices. He was interested in the young and the new. Ahrenberg's most important collecting principle was to buy works exclusively from artists he knew personally. When his artists became established in the early sixties, he sold their works at a high profit and invested again in the advancing avant-garde. Today his collection would be worth over a billion euros.

The second collection

Theodor Ahrenberg and Ulla Ahrenberg

The second collection, built up in Switzerland, initially comprised works that artists created as invited guests in Ahrenberg's villa in Chexbres and that he bought at time prices. Later classics such as Sam Francis , Christo , Lucio Fontana , Jean Tinguely , Niki de Saint Phalle , Arman , Robert Rauschenberg , Mark Tobey , Enrico Baj , Yaacov Agam , Edward Kienholz , Meret Oppenheim and Heinrich Richter became his close friends .

The character of his new collection is completely different from that of his time in Sweden. At that time he endeavored to give an optimal overview of current art from an art-historical point of view ; his new collection “... shows a more playful, experimental and personal character. Your starting point is the subjective and situation-dependent selection, not the ambition to give an objective or qualitative overview ”(Folke Edwards). His new collection grew to around 6,000 exhibits, including numerous curiosities and experimental works such as the ceramics (e.g. plates, bowls, piggy banks and ashtrays) as well as wine labels that visited artists such as Albert Chubac, Lars Gynning, Gérard “Imof” Imhof, Julio Zapata, Roberto Crippa and Ricci Riggenbach decorated in a strange and playful way.

After Theodor Ahrenberg's death (1989), his wife Ulla Ahrenberg took up work as curator of the collection. Her son Staffan Ahrenberg , now a successful Hollywood producer and entrepreneur, is continuing his father's collector activities. He collects young American and European art, including established artists such as Richard Serra , Robert Longo , Wolfgang Tillmans , Cildo Meireles , Jenny Holzer , Martin Kippenberger and Adrián Villar Rojas , and has been the renowned French art and literary magazine since October 2012, which was discontinued in 1960 Cahiers d'Art reissued.

The first detailed monograph on Ahrenberg's life and collections was published in September 2018. The book was published in English as Living with Picasso, Matisse and Christo: Theodor Ahrenberg and His Collections by Thames & Hudson, London, and in Swedish as Ett liv med Matisse, Picasso och Christo - Theodor Ahrenberg och hans samlingar by Arvinius + Orfeus Publishing , Stockholm.

Exhibitions (selection)

Exhibition poster "Ahrenberg Collection" in the Museum St. Ingbert (1993)

• 1954 National Museum, Stockholm: "Modern Utländsk Konst ur Svenska Privatsamlingar" (Foreign art in Swedish private collections)
• 1957 National Museum, Stockholm
• 1957 Skånska Konstmuseum, Lund
• 1957 Konsthallen Helsingfors, Helsinki
• 1958 Musée des Beaux-Arts, Liège
• 1959 Kunsthaus Zurich
• 1960 Göteborgs Konstförening, Konsthallen, Göteborg
• 1961 Frederiksberg Radhus, Copenhagen
• 1967 Salle communale de Chexbres: "aspects"
• 1977 Art Association for the Rhineland and Westphalia, Düsseldorf: “The collector Theodor Ahrenberg and the studio in Chexbres. 15 years with art and artists. 1960–1975 "
• 1987 Kunsthalle Schirn Frankfurt am Main: “Le Corbusier secret. Drawings and collages from the Ahrenberg collection. "

The exhibition was then shown in: Musée cantonal des beaux-arts de Lausanne , Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum ( Aalborg ), Lunds Konsthall ( Lund ), Museum of Finnish Architecture ( Helsinki ), Pori Art Museum ( Pori ), Neue Galerie ( Linz )

• 1993 Göteborgs Konstmuseet ( Göteborg ): "Ahrenberg Collection"

The exhibition was then shown in the Östergötlands Länsmuseum ( Linköping ), the Museum St. Ingbert ( St. Ingbert ), and the "Musée Fondation Deutsch" ( Belmont-sur-Lausanne ).

• 1998 Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mons ( Belgium ): “Hej Teto! Ahrenberg Collection "
• 1999 Palais Bénédictine ( Fécamp , Région Haute-Normandie ): "Collection Ahrenberg - 50 ans d'histoire de l'art"

Film / video

• In the name of art . A portrait of Theodor 'Teto' Ahrenberg, collector and patron devoted to artists and their art. Film by JP Morgan Friberg, 1990
• Konstsamlaren och katastrofen (The Art Collector and Tragedy). Film by Clara Törnvall, SVT Play, 2017

literature

• Ahrenberg Collection. Exhibition catalog, in three languages. Ed .: Göteborgs Konstmuseum. Arr .: Folke Edwards. Göteborg 1993. 146 pp., Numerous. b / w u. Color ill. ISBN 91-87968-193 .
• Ahrenberg, Theodor, Jag har ju ändå en Picasso. Memoarer av Teto Ahrenberg, utmanaren, konstsamlaren, mecenaten , Ulla Ahrenberg and Folke Edwards (eds.), Walhström & Widstrand, Stockholm, 1993
• Ahrenberg, Theodor and Ulla: Le Corbusier Secret. Designs and collages from the Ahrenberg collection. Lausanne, Vevey: self-published, 1987. 213 p. Ill.
• aspects, 5 ans d'activités à l'atelier du Rocher Chexbres , Salle communale de Chexbres, 1967
• Catalog of forty-nine bronzes by Matisse. [Auction catalog of the Theodor Ahrenberg collection , Stockholm]. London: Sotheby 1960. 100 pp., 50 full-page. Fig.
• Ahrenberg Collection. 50 ans d'histoire de l'art , Palais Bénédictine, Fécamp, 1999
• The collector Theodor Ahrenberg and the studio in Chexbres. 15 years with art and artists 1960 - 1975. Catalog for the exhibition. Ed .: Art Association for the Rhineland and Westphalia. Arranged: Karl-Heinz Hering. Düsseldorf 1977.
• Designs and collages from the Ahrenberg collection [drawings and collages from the Ahrenberg collection]. Exhibition catalog, bilingual. Ed .: Kunsthalle Schirn. Arr .: Erika Billeter. Frankfurt / Main: 1987.
• Gallery Denise René . Mes anneés 50. [Abner, Adrian-Nilson, Agam, Ahrenberg and others]. Paris: Ed. Galérie Denise René 1988. 96 p., Approx. 100 illustrations (b / w).
• Hey Teto! Ahrenberg Collection. [Catalog for the exhibition in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mons, Belgium] Mons: Self-published by the museum, 1998. 119 p., Numerous. predominantly color illus . ISBN 2-930211-02-4 .
• Karl-Heinz Hering (ed.), Heinrich Richter. Paintings, watercolors, drawings 1961–1978 (exh. Cat.), Art Association for the Rhineland and Westphalia, Düsseldorf, 1978
• Heinrich Richter: Les neuf Muses (The girls from Chexbres). [D'après une idée de Theodor Ahrenberg]. Paris / Genève: Ed. Forces Vives, ca.1970.

Web links

Commons : Theodor Ahrenberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Theodor Ahrenberg in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Thilo Richter: Being there in the kitchen of art . In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of April 21, 2011

Footnotes

1. ↑ Theodor Ahrenberg, Jag har ju ändå en Picasso, Memoarer av Teto Ahrenberg, utmanaren, konstsamlaren, mecenaten , Ulla Ahrenberg and Folke Edwards (eds.), Walhström & Widstrand, Stockholm, 1993, p. 29
2. ↑ Fondation Le Corbusier: Pavillon d'exposition, palais Ahrenberg, Stockholm, Sweden, 1962 , accessed on March 29, 2017
3. ↑ The model was created at RWTH Aachen University in a course of study by Prof. Dr. Bertig. The dimensions are 1.50 mx 1.80 m, which corresponds to a scale of 1:20. Archived copy ( memento of September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ).
4. ^ ^{A b} Tilo Richter: Being there in the kitchen of art - Theodor Ahrenberg in portrait in the FAS from April 21, 2011.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Wolfgang Büscher : Then they took Teto with them - How Picasso's friend lost his world-famous collection in blue (Kunstmagazin der Welt ), pp. 48–55, May / June 2015.
6. ↑ Carin Ståhlberg: Fel man på fel plats vid fel tid (German: Wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time ) in Dagens Nyheter from June 19, 1993.