Heinz Kisters

Last updated

Heinz Kisters (born 1912; died 1977 in Kreuzlingen) was a German entrepreneur, art dealer and art collector.

Contents

Life

Trained as a high-frequency engineer, Kisters was successful as an art dealer, selling notably to Konrad Adenauer. He assembled an extensive art collection of old masters, as well as uncertain attributions.

The "Heinz Kisters Foundation" continues in Kreuzlingen. [1] [2] [3]

The collection includes works by Sandro Botticelli, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Gerard David, Anton van Dyck, Jean Honoré Fragonard, Esteban Murillo, Peter Paul Rubens, Hans Schäufelein, Jan van Scorel, Bernardo Strozzi, Jacopo Tintoretto, Tiziano Vecellio, Diego Velázquez, [4] Merten van Heemskerk and other masters. [5] It is thus an important private collection of Old German, Old Dutch as well as early Italian painting, Venetian Cinquecento and Spanish painting of the 17th century. [6]

The auction of a Titian painting in 2011 caused a sensation on the art market. [7] [8]

Criticism

Heinz Kisters was the lifelong art dealer and advisor to German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. Adenauer met Kisters in 1950 through the Cologne banker Robert Pferdmenges. Heinz Kisters supplied Adenauer with artworks he attributed to Aert van der Neer, Anthonis van Dijck, Palma Vecchio, Nicolaes Maes and Bartholomaeus Bruyn. However, the artists were thought to be student or workshops. Some attributions were based on appraisals paid after Kisters' purchase. The fact that other experts came to substantially different judgments was mentioned at most in the footnotes. [9]

When Adenauer died in April 1967, his sons commissioned the then director of the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlung to review the collection and give an expert opinion. According to the journalist Koldehoff, this appraisal amounted to 469,000 D-marks, which was far below what was expected for a collection of works by El Greco and Cranach. The appraisal, which was supported by material analyses from the Doerner Institute, forced Kisters to buy back 19 paintings for 950,000 D-marks. These works, together with other works from Kisters' possession, were put up for auction at Christie's in London. The 36 paintings for sale were expected to fetch 6 million D-marks, but only 5 of them were sold for a sum of 156,000 D-marks. [10] Individual works, however, were later auctioned off at higher prices.

In an interview, Konrad Adenauer's grandson, whose own name is Konrad Adenauer, said of Kisters:

"My father never trusted Kisters. He was regarded by the Adenauers as a gray but obscure eminence. Kisters was like a secret name in the family: "Kisters was back," they would say. No one really knew what was behind it, but everyone knew that it had great significance for my grandfather. He was a kind of myth. Kisters haunted the conversations, but what the two of them were up to, no one knew. Skepticism was always present on the part of the children. After the death, that skepticism was confirmed." [11]

Literature

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucas Cranach the Elder</span> German painter and printmaker (1472–1553)

Lucas Cranach the Elder was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving. He was court painter to the Electors of Saxony for most of his career, and is known for his portraits, both of German princes and those of the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, whose cause he embraced with enthusiasm. He was a close friend of Martin Luther. Cranach also painted religious subjects, first in the Catholic tradition, and later trying to find new ways of conveying Lutheran religious concerns in art. He continued throughout his career to paint nude subjects drawn from mythology and religion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred Pringsheim</span>

Alfred Pringsheim was a German mathematician and patron of the arts. He was born in Ohlau, Prussian Silesia and died in Zürich, Switzerland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister</span> Art gallery in Dresden, Germany

The Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, Germany, displays around 750 paintings from the 15th to the 18th centuries. It includes major Italian Renaissance works as well as Dutch and Flemish paintings. Outstanding works by German, French, and Spanish painters of the period are also among the gallery's attractions.

<i>100 Great Paintings</i> 1980 British television series

100 Great Paintings is a British television series broadcast in 1980 on BBC 2, devised by Edwin Mullins. He chose 20 thematic groups, such as war, the Adoration, the language of colour, the hunt, and bathing, picking five paintings from each. The selection ranges from 12th-century China through the 1950s, with an emphasis on European paintings. He deliberately avoided especially famous paintings, such as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa or John Constable's The Haywain. The series is available on VHS and DVD.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Augustiner Museum</span> Museum in Germany

The Augustiner Museum is a museum in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany located in the former Augustinian Monastery building. It is undergoing an extensive renovation and expansion, the first phase of which ended in 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kupferstichkabinett Berlin</span> Prints museum in Berlin, Germany

The Kupferstichkabinett, or Museum of Prints and Drawings, is a prints museum in Berlin, Germany. It is part of the Berlin State Museums, and is located in the Kulturforum on Potsdamer Platz. It is the largest museum of graphic art in Germany, with more than 500,000 prints and around 110,000 individual works on paper.

<i>Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria</i> Painting by Titian

The Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria, also known simply as Holy Conversation, is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Titian. It is one of his several versions of the canonical image of the Madonna and Child.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guido Dessauer</span> German physicist (1915–2012)

Guido Dessauer was a German physicist, pioneer in paper engineering, business executive, writer, art collector, patron of the arts, and academic. Born into a family of paper industrialists, he worked as an aerospace engineer during World War II and was an executive of the family's coloured paper factory in Aschaffenburg from 1945. He was an honorary citizen of Austria for saving 300 jobs in Styria in the 1960s. He earned a Ph.D. from the Graz University of Technology in his late 50s and became an honorary professor there. Interested in art, he collected bozzetti for 50 years and initiated the career of Horst Janssen as a lithographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ivo Ringe</span> German artist

Ivo Ringe is a German artist, who is classified as a concrete art painter. He is also a docent and a curator of international group exhibitions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heiner Thiel</span> German sculptor and curator

Heiner Thiel is a German sculptor and curator. He is an exponent of concrete art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Molitor & Kuzmin</span>

Molitor & Kuzmin are a collaborative duo of visual artists, who are classified as light art and installation artists.

Jörg Madlener is a German painter, engraver and stage designer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leo Lewin</span> German merchant and art collector

Leo Lewin was a German merchant, art collector and horse breeder who was persecuted by the Nazis due to being Jewish.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max Meirowsky</span> German Jewish industrialist

Max Meirowsky was a German-Jewish industrialist and art collector persecuted by the Nazis.

Arthur I. Kauffmann was a German-British art historian and art dealer.

Rolf Fritz was a German art historian. His research focused on German art from the Middle Ages to the 19th century, especially on the art and cultural history of Westphalia, as well as on various genres of arts and crafts.

Siegfried Rosengart was a German-Swiss art dealer.

Margarete Eisenmann was a Jewish art collector who was murdered in the Holocaust

Helene Hecht was a German Jewish art collector, salonnière and patron of the arts.

References

  1. ↑ "La Fondation Heinz Кистерса, Kreuzlingen - Museums". Arthive. Retrieved 2022-02-16.
  2. ↑ "Stiftung Heinz Kisters Activities of other membership organisations n.e.c., Kreuzlingen". Swiss Business Directory - Business information for Switzerland. Retrieved 2022-02-16.
  3. ↑ "Stiftung Heinz Kisters in Kreuzlingen". Moneyhouse. Retrieved 2022-02-16.
  4. ↑ Schoop, Albert (1982). Museen und Sammlungen im Thurgau (in German). Frauenfeld: Thurgauisches Museum. OCLC   715164114.
  5. ↑ "Onken [Hg.): Meisterwerke aus der Sammlung Heinz Kisters. 1971. | Proveana". www.proveana.de. Retrieved 2022-02-15.
  6. ↑ "Artist, attributed to: Bernard van Orley, Flemish, ca. 1488–1542 The Adoration of the Magi Yale University Art Gallery". artgallery.yale.edu. Retrieved 2022-02-15. Wittgenstein Collection, Vienna. Kofer Collection, Vienna. With the Galerie St. Lucas, Vienna, 1937. Dr. Zdenko Bruck (1930–1979), Berne, Switzerland and Buenos Aires, by 1939; sale, Kende Galleries at Gimbel Brothers, New York City, June 5, 1940 lot 23. Sale, Sotheby's, London, March 11, 1964, lot 128. Heinz Kisters (1912–1977), Kreuzlingen, Switzerland; [sale, Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne, December 29–30, 1967 through January 2–3, 1968, lot 34 (unsold)]; sale, Kunsthaus Lempertz, Cologne, November 18–27, 1968, lot 34. [Sale, Sotheby's, London, December 9, 1992, lot 63 (unsold)] [Sale, Sotheby's, Amsterdam, November 17, 1993, lot 79 (unsold)]. Sale, Sotheby's, London, May 4, 1995, lot 187; Dr. Herbert Schaefer (1910–2011) and Monika Schaefer (née Winter, died 2019), Malaga, Spain, by 1995 (on loan to the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn., 1995–2019); bequeathed to the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Conn., 2019. This work appears on our "Artworks with Nazi-Era Provenance Documentation Gaps" page.
  7. ↑ "Titian Madonna and Child sells for record $16.9m". BBC News. 2011-01-28. Retrieved 2022-02-16.
  8. ↑ Vogel, Carol (2010-10-28). "Potential Titian Buyers Get an Advance Look". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2022-02-16. "A Sacra Conversazione" (around 1560) is coming from the collection of Gerlinda Kisters, the widow of Heinz Kisters, a German businessman who lived in Switzerland and died in 1977. He amassed hundreds of old master paintings and had at least two other Titians. He bought this one in 1956 from New York dealers who had purchased it at a Christie's auction in London two years earlier.
  9. ↑ Koldehoff, Stefan (2011-01-23). "Der Mann, der Adenauer betrog". DIE WELT (in German). Retrieved 2022-02-15.
  10. ↑ "Heinz Kisters: Der Mann, bei dem Konrad Adenauer Kunst kaufte". DER STANDARD (in Austrian German). Retrieved 2022-02-15.
  11. ↑ "Der Kanzler und die Kunst – Konrad Adenauers Privatsammlung | Rheinische Geschichte" (in German). 2019-05-13. Retrieved 2022-02-15.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.