Jan Krugier
Isabel Andrews, Thursday, 20th November 2008
The death of Jan Krugier on 15 November (aged 80) marked the passing of one of the art world’s notorious figures. As an art dealer and collector, his international reputation derived not simply from his discerning eye but also from his advisory relationship to members of the Picasso family that began shortly after Pablo Picasso’s death in 1973.
Krugier had originally hoped to be an artist himself, a plan he relinquished after discouragement from his friends Matisse and Giacometti, the latter suggesting he consider becoming a dealer instead. He went into business with his second wife, Marie-Anne Poniatowska, managing to raise $12,000 for their first acquisition of a landscape by Seurat. From small beginnings, Krugier began collecting in earnest and with shrewd aplomb: during the 1970s he bought a series of paintings by Cézanne – a period in which the artist had lost popularity.
Over 40 years Krugier put together a spectacular collection: Old Masters, an entire wall of Ingres, drawings by Poussin, Rembrandt and Van Gogh, described by connoisseurs as ‘probably the greatest collection of drawings in the world.’
The root of Krugier’s drive to acquire lay in his childhood experiences at the hands of the Nazi party. Born in Poland in 1928 to a Jewish father (a manufacturer and also a modest art collector) who was later killed fighting the German invasion (his mother died in childbirth when Krugier was five), Krugier twice escaped from trains destined for Treblinka before being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, then to Bergen-Belsen where he was liberated by British troops in 1945. He remained throughout his life anguished by the memories of concentration camps. ‘Collecting is a kind of psychotherapy’, he has said. ‘That’s the way I tried to close Pandora’s box, to reconcile myself with other human beings and to live with the memories haunting me.’
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