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Shared Passions
Jan Alexander
08/02/2004
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A shared passion for art brought the baron and the former Spanish beauty
queen together. One night off the coast of Sardinia, Baron Heinrich
Thyssen-Bornemisza was enduring a tedious party aboard his yacht when Carmen
“Tita” Cervera joined him for a game of backgammon. Their conversation soon
turned to Paul Gauguin’s Mata Mua and the other masterpieces that the baron had
in his extensive collection. Thyssen-Bornemisza had been married four times at
that point, but Tita, who became his fifth wife in 1985, was alone in her great
appreciation of the art the baron kept in his Swiss villa.
Today, the
baron’s collection hangs in Madrid in a restored palace opposite the Prado. This
summer, the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Tita’s own collected works,
debuted in two nearby buildings. Though the baron, who died in 2002, had four
children, the vast bulk of his collection now belongs to an appreciative
public.
By now, we all know that art has a significant investment value. What
gives art its greatest value, however, are factors that are both more abstract
and intuitive. The stories in the pages that follow trace the early, middle and
later stages of an art collecting career, looking at the intricacies and
stratagems that underpin the successful establishment of an art legacy. Whether
this becomes one of our family’s birthrights, handed down from generation to
generation, depends, of course, on the family in question, and whether our
legatees share our aesthetic passions. It might otherwise find its way to a
museum, or back onto the market. Ultimately, however, nearly all art worth
preserving belongs to the ages, and can be made available for a wide audience to
enjoy.Photography by Susan Anderson
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