Modern art collector Ernst Beyeler dies

Ernst Beyeler, 88, whose early eye for undervalued Picassos and Impressionists helped him assemble one of Europe's most famous art collections, died Feb. 25 at his home near Basel, Switzerland. No cause of death was reported.

Mr. Beyeler became a widely respected art patron after World War II by acquiring hundreds of works by Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, Claude Monet, Henri Matisse and others. He presented them to the public in his Basel gallery and later in the foundation he founded near the German border.

His art collection grew to be worth at least $1.85 billion, thanks to his taste for quality and his personal connections with artists such as Georges Braque, Marc Chagall and Alberto Giacometti. He also was a friend of Picasso's.

"Art must touch you and leave a strong visual and mental impression upon you," Mr. Beyeler once told the Swiss weekly magazine NZZ Folio.

Born on July 16, 1921, in Basel, Mr. Beyeler discovered his passion for art after taking a job in an antique shop shortly after World War II. He then studied economics and art history at the University of Basel and started collecting Japanese woodcarvings.

In his exhibitions, he sought to give paintings and sculptures enough space to have an impact on the viewer, rejecting the old-fashioned museum approach of stuffing as many works into a little room as possible.

In 1948, he married Hildy Kunz, who became a constant companion in his art business until her death in 2008. Together, they mounted numerous art exhibitions featuring modern classics in the 1950s. They sometimes went into debt and paid for paintings in installments, including his first major acquisition, Wassily Kandinsky's "Improvisation 10."

In the 60 years since, more than 16,000 paintings, drawings and sculptures, including works by Picasso, Monet and Vincent van Gogh, changed hands at his Basel gallery. He kept the Kandinsky painting, and today it could fetch $25 million at auction, according to published estimates.

Mr. Beyeler's success in the art trade lay mainly in buying such underrated works, from Monet's "Nymphs" to one of van Gogh's wheat fields to a Henri Rousseau painting of a "Hungry Lion Pouncing on an Antelope." When their prices increased dramatically, he sold them at considerable profit.

Mr. Beyeler "had the guts and commitment to 'bet large' on the greatness of 20th-century modernism some years before it was 'consecrated' by the art market," onetime Museum of Modern Art director William Rubin wrote in 1997.

Mr. Beyeler met Picasso four decades earlier.

"One day he took me by the arm and said, 'Take your time to choose what you want. I will let you know then what I am willing to let go,' " Mr. Beyeler said, recounting how Picasso lent him 46 works for his Basel gallery in 1966.

Mr. Beyeler acquired 26 of them, including the masterpiece "Woman," which he never sold.

In 1981, the Beyeler Gallery organized a comprehensive retrospective to mark the centenary of Picasso's birth. Mr. Beyeler spearheaded successful exhibitions at the Basel art museum, becoming the most influential art patron in Switzerland. In 1971, he was a founder of Basel's renowned international art fair, which continues today as one of the world's biggest draws for contemporary works.

After adding some 100 oil paintings, watercolors and drawings by Kandinsky to his collection in the 1970s, Mr. Beyeler and his wife created a foundation in 1982. He presented the collection of about 200 modern classics in exhibitions in Madrid, Berlin and Sydney but then decided to build his own museum and enlisted star architect Renzo Piano.

The Beyeler Foundation opened in 1997. A masterpiece of contemporary architecture, the museum is airy and enhanced by the soft colors, large windows and outdoor park with two ponds that create different shades of light and color as they reflect on artworks consciously placed on the walls of different rooms.

"I have always perceived works of art as parables of creation, 'analogous to nature' as Cezanne once said, as an expression of joie de vivre," Mr. Beyeler said at the museum's unveiling.

He had no children.