Siegfried Rosengart (1894 – 1985) was a German-Swiss art dealer.

Early life

Rosengart was born in 1894. His parents were Heinrich Rosengart (1850–1921), a bed feather maker, and Selma Thannhauser. His uncles, Joseph Rosengart and

Heinrich Thannhauser Heinrich Thannhauser (born February 16, 1859, in Hürben, today a district of Krumbach (Swabia); died 1934 on the German-Swiss border) was a German gallery owner and art collector. As an art dealer, he was one of the most important promoters of ea ...

, were both involved in art. In 1912 Rosengart was influenced by a visit to the

Sonderbund The Sonderbund War (, , ) of November 1847 was a civil war in Switzerland, then still a relatively loose confederacy of cantons. It ensued after seven Catholic cantons formed the ("separate alliance") in 1845 to protect their interests against ...

exhibition in Cologne in 1912, which featured modern art. He met Picasso while studying French in Paris in 1913–14. In 1919, Rosengart joined his uncle Heinrich Thannhauser's gallery. Rosengart opened a branch for Thannhauser in Lucerne in 1920, managing it until 1937. In 1933 he received Swiss citizenship.

Art dealing and collecting

Rosengart's daughter, Angela, joined him in running the gallery in 1948, becoming a partner in 1957. Rosengart sold artworks to museums, like the

Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is the art collection of the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia, in Düsseldorf. United by this institution are three different exhibition venues: the ''K20'' at Grabbeplatz, the ''K21'' in th ...

(North Rhine-Westphalia Art Collection) in Düsseldorf, as well as to private collectors like Etta and Claribel Cone (Gauguin, "Woman with Mango," Matisse, "Odalisque," Picasso, "Mother and Child," now Baltimore Musée). Child," now Baltimore Mus.) and Samuel Courtauld (Manet, "A Bar in the Folies Bergère," London). He dealt frequently in works by

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...

. He acted as an advisor and intermediary for Bernhard Sprengel (1899–1985) and Peter Ludwig (1925-96). Rosengart also collected art for his own private collection. In 1971, he and his daughter Angela donated a Picasso painting to the

Kunsthaus Zürich The Kunsthaus Zürich is an art museum in Zurich. It is the biggest art museum in Switzerland by area and houses one of the most important art collections in Switzerland, assembled over time by the Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, a nonprofit art soc ...

in 1971. In 1978, with eight artworks, they created a small Picasso museum for the city of Lucerne, adding about 200 photographs of Picasso by David Douglas Duncan in 1992..

Legacy

Rosengart died in 1985. Since then, his daughter has continued to run the gallery. In 1992 she established a charitable foundation to preserve and exhibit the Rosengart collection. In March 2002 it opened in the former building of the Swiss. National Bank in Lucerne. The core of the collection consists of 47 paintings and drawings by Picasso from the years between 1904 and 1972, as well as 125 selected Klee works from all creative periods, making it one of the most important private Klee collections internationally. It also includes three paintings by Cezanne as well as paintings by Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Seurat, the Nabis artists Bonnard and Vuillard, and works by Modigliani, Soutine, Matisse, Braque, Léger, Kandinsky, Miró and Chagall.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosengart, Siegfried 1894 births 1985 deaths Swiss art dealers Swiss Jews 20th-century German Jews