Thomas Ammann (art dealer)

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Thomas Ammann, 1990

Thomas E. Ammann (* 1950 in Ermatingen TG ; † June 9, 1993 in Zurich ) was a Swiss art dealer of impressionism and classical modernism and a collector of post-war and contemporary art .

biography

Thomas Ammann, born in Ermatingen on Lake Constance in 1950, the youngest of four children, collected art while attending the Trogen Cantonal School . At the age of 18, he began to work for the Zurich gallery owner Bruno Bischofberger, who was ten years his senior, in his galleries in St. Moritz and Zurich. During these years of apprenticeship Ammann met the American pop artist Andy Warhol , who would become a close friend and supporter of his. In 1977 Ammann started his own business and founded his gallery Thomas Ammann Fine Art. His specialist knowledge and skills made Thomas Ammann one of the world's most important art dealers and collectors by his mid-30s.

Thomas Ammann died on June 9, 1993 in the Bircher Benner Clinic in Zurich at the age of 43. The memorial service for family and close friends took place in the St. Peter Church in Zurich. He found his final resting place in the Fluntern cemetery in Zurich . The memorial event in honor of Ammann on November 18, 1993 at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, New York, with the keynote speakers Ernst Beyeler , Bob Colacello , Patricia Phelps de Cisneros , Bianca Jagger , Thomas Krens , William H. Luers and Robert Wilson as well the artists Ross Bleckner , Francesco Clemente and Eric Fischl .

Act

Thomas Ammann and Andy Warhol , Zurich, 1978

In 1977 Thomas Ammann founded his own art trading company Ammann Fine Art (later Thomas Ammann Fine Art AG ), which specialized in particular in top works of impressionism and classical modernism . This brought the young art dealer into contact with the great collectors of the time, including Giovanni Agnelli , Gustavo Cisneros , David Geffen , Ronald Lauder , SI Newhouse junior , Stavros Niarchos , Ronald Perelman , Yves Saint Laurent and Hans-Heinrich Thyssen- Bornemisza .

Ammann worked from his private home, the Bauhaus villa of Otto Rudolf Salvisberg on the Zürichberg , his chalet in Gstaad or his penthouse in the New York Hotel The Pierre and traded in pictures, sculptures and works on paper by Francis Bacon , Balthus , Max Beckmann , Constantin Brâncuși , and Georges Braque , Alexander Calder , Alberto Giacometti , Wassily Kandinsky , Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Paul Klee , Willem de Kooning , Fernand Léger , Henri Matisse , Joan Miró , Barnett Newman , Pablo Picasso and Mark Rothko .

It is due to his secrecy that only a few works of art mediated by Ammann (and only those that were acquired by museums) are publicly known, such as Max Ernst's 1926 painting The Virgin Chastises the Child Jesus in front of three witnesses: André Breton, Paul Éluard and the painter to the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, or Vincent van Gogh's Portrait of Joseph Roulin , which Ammann received in 1989, according to the New York Times, for almost 60 million US dollars (plus five works that the museum also exchanged) the New York Museum of Modern Art sold. In 1987 Thomas Ammann Fine Art began to organize summer exhibitions.

Thomas Ammann Fine Art is now run by Ammann's sister Doris Amman, who was the gallery's accountant from 1979 until Ammann's death, and Georg Frei. Ammann's only nephew, Tobias Mueller Ammann, has headed the Bruno Bischofberger gallery in Zurich since 1995 , after having worked for the auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s in New York and London .

collection

Thomas Ammann and Alexander Schmidheiny, 1983

In addition to Ammann's work as an art dealer, he was particularly active as a sponsor of young artists, whose works he collected exclusively privately and with whom he did not trade ( You shall not collect what you want to sell ). The financial means for the collection came from his childhood friend Alexander Schmidheiny, who was also an art enthusiast . The two friends shared the goal of building a top-class collection of contemporary art. A selection of the collection was shown in 1985 in the Kunsthalle Basel by the then director and art critic Jean-Christophe Ammann (not related) under the title From Twombly to Clemente - Selected works from a Private Collection . Over the years, Ammann and Schmidheiny have managed to acquire significant groups of works by the artists Andy Warhol , Cy Twombly , Brice Marden , Robert Ryman and Sigmar Polke . After the early death of Alexander Schmidheiny in 1992 and Thomas Ammann in 1993, their siblings took over the inheritance. Doris Ammann exhibits some of the inherited works as private loans. Stephan Schmidheiny handed over his share to the newly created Daros Collection (Zurich).

issue

Ammann supported the fight against the immunodeficiency disease AIDS , to which many prominent figures in the art world fell victim , early on . Together with Mrs. William F. Buckley, Jr. , he organized a benefit auction on May 2, 1988, following the auction of the Andy Warhol collection at Sotheby’s auction house in New York. For the auction, which brought in nearly two million US dollars, Ammann convinced artist friends from Jasper Johns to Cy Twombly to donate works of art; all sales went to the Supportive Care Program of St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center of New York .

As chairman of the international program of the Department of Art Against AIDS amfAR (American Foundation for AIDS Research) , he organized with the help of his friends Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn in 1991 on the occasion of Art Basel , a charity dinner at the Kunstmuseum Basel for 500 prominent figures from the art - and entertainment industry, which brought in over 2.3 million francs in donations.

Catalog raisonné by Andy Warhol

In 1977 Andy Warhol entrusted Thomas Ammann with compiling his catalog raisonné , the comprehensive and scientifically binding catalog raisonné of all paintings, sculptures and works on paper. This turned out to be an extensive undertaking, so that the opening volumes only appeared in 2002 and 2004 in the English publisher Phaidon Press .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Solid as a rock. Art dealers and collectors / On the death of Thomas Ammann. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , published June 16, 1993.
  2. ↑ Bruno Bischofberger: Andy Warhol's Visual Memory , p. 6. Edition Bruno Bischofberger, 2001.
  3. ↑ Deborah Gimelson: Ammann for all seasons. In: The Connoisseur Magazine, London, V.221, N. 953, June 1991, pp. 36-38, 40-41.
  4. ^ Collector and Modern Art Dealer Thomas Ammann. In: Artnewsletter, Vol. XVIII, No. 22, June 22, 1993.
  5. ^ Obituary of the New York Times : Thomas Ammann, Modern Art Dealer And a Collector, 43
  6. ↑ Artnewspaper, RB: Thomas Ammann - Major player and patron of artists this at 43 , News No. 30, p. 3, London, July-September 1993.
  7. ↑ "Portrait of Joseph Roulin"
  8. ^ Kimmelman, Michael: How the MoMA got the Van Gogh. New York Times, October 9, 1989.
  9. ^ The Thomas Ammann Fine Art gallery in Zurich: artist and collector friendships . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . June 16, 2003, ISSN  0376-6829 ( nzz.ch [accessed December 28, 2016]).
  10. ↑ Daros Services: History of the Daros Collection. Retrieved December 28, 2016 .
  11. ^ Thomas Ammann: Contemporary Art - A Benefit Auction for The Supportive Care Program of St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center of New York. Sotheby's New York, May 2, 1988.
  12. ↑ Stefan Zucker: Andy Warhol and Thomas Ammann - The Power of Money - why Switzerland is a stroke of luck for the art world. SF1 Kulturplatz extra, January 5, 2011; Hildegard Schwaninger: AIDS Aid: A lot of money thanks to Liz Taylor / Basler Celebrity Roundup. In: Tages-Anzeiger , June 1991.
personal data
SURNAME Ammann, Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ammann, Thomas E.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss art dealer and collector
DATE OF BIRTH 1950
PLACE OF BIRTH Ermatingen
DATE OF DEATH June 9, 1993
Place of death Zurich