Landschaften von Brueghel bis Kandinsky
 
 The Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum
 History of the Collection Thyssen-Bornemisza
 
Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza

Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza
© Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza




Hans Heinrich Baron Thyssen Bornemisza

Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza bei der Ankunft seiner Sammlung aus Lugano in Madrid, 1992
© Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza


History of the Collection Thyssen-Bornemisza


August Thyssen (1842-1926), founder of the still-existing prominent German iron- and steelworks, did not start collecting art until late in life. The marble sculptures he commissioned Auguste Rodin to produce in 1905 mark the beginning of a great passion for collecting, which his son Heinrich inherited, becoming one of his main purposes in life, and which has been passed on to the current baron, Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza.

Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (1875-1947), founder of an industrial empire and successful banker, was a passionate art collector who laid the actual foundations of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection. As of the 1920s he brought together an unusual collection of German, Flemish, Dutch, Italian, Spanish and French Old Masters from the 13th to 18th centuries. His particular attention was given to German Renaissance and portrait painting.

In 1932 he acquired the Villa Favorita at Lake Lugano, where he installed his collection which had until then been stored at his family's castle Rohoncz in Hungary. The gallery was opened to the public in 1937, yet was forced to close at the outbreak of World War II. In 1948, a year after Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza's death, his son Hans Heinrich reopened the gallery to public view.

The current baron, Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza (* 1921) not only inherited his father's passion for collecting but also the most significant part of his collection. Since then, Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza has not ceased to expand his collection of Old Master paintings. In addition, his appreciation of art also began to include 19th and 20th century art, an interest his father did not share. As a result, the collection has been augmented by 19th century North American art, German Expressionist painting, French and American Impressionism, Russian avant-garde painting and other significant artistic movements of the early 20th century. Landscape painting, however, is the object of his personal passion. Today the collection includes 1,500 works of art, more than three times the amount collected in 1930. Since 1983, regular exhibitions organized at the Villa Favorita have made it an internationally renowned institution.

The tradition of collecting fine art has also been enthusiastically taken up by Baroness Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza (* 1943). The Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, which meanwhile comprises 900 works of art, focuses on Spanish, French and American painting of the 19th and 20th Century.
 

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