THE CHOICE OF ONE OF THE RICHEST WOMEN IN THE WORLD

The exhibition season is very full between January and the French holiday period. I make less and less effort to go and see the « block-busters » and there are some museums which are not easy to get around. The Jacquemart André is one of them. The rooms are so small and when a couple of groups move in, it is virtually impossible to see a picture or move at all. Still I was interested to go and see the Alicia Koplowitz collection. Now I come to think of it, there have been quite a few private collections shown to the public since the end of last year. 

Naturally I knew nothing about this woman. 

Alicia Koplowitz is very well known in her home country, Spain. Thanks to her company, the Capital Omega Group  a comprehensive financial services company, she has become an important collecter Alicia is is a Spanish business magnate. When her father died, she and her sister inherited Construcciones y Contratas, S.A. (CYCSA), a company founded by her father. She  sold her part of the company to her sister and created one of the largest family offices in Europe called Omega Capital. She ranks as Spain's richest woman in Forbes 2013 World's Richest People list


 Even if there is no particular focus to the collection, just works that she was very attracted to.


Most of the great artists of the 20th century are represented. A Mark Rothko masterpiece N°6 (Yellow, White, Blue over Yellow on Gray), which  is made up of large flat areas of color, devoid of distinctive signs the different intensities of light and color clash and force themselves on the viewer’s attention. You like Rothko or you don’t. I do. When moving around his work, brush strokes can be seen and sometimes, you feel as if you could enter into the painting itself. 

Rothko

 

 A beautiful but unsettling work by Lucian Freud. Freud’s « Young Girl in a Fur Coat », (1967) is loaded with greys, whites and browns, in the blotchy face and distracted gaze, Freud deliberately rejects any temptation to charm. He may well have been one of the most prolific portrait painters of his time, but nobody is beautiful and sometimes quite ugly. He charged fortunes to those who sat for him.

Picasso "HEAD AND HAND OF WOMAN" 1921

Pablo Picasso, Woman’s Head and Hand is one of the first pictures where we see how parts of the body will become large and ungainly. 








 

MODIGLIANI - 1918

 

 Amedeo Modigliani, Red-headed Woman wearing a Pendant,

A.K and Goya, the Countess of Hero around 1802/03

Alicia obviously has a penchant for female portraits. There are 8 displayed on the 53 pictures presented. The modern works I liked but although I can admire the Golden Age of Goya and certainly the portraits of that period are a little easier to take than later works…I am still not overly attracted to 18th and 19th century art.   But the above modern and 19th century portraits display real beauties!
 

MANUEL CAMARON Y MELIA - "Majos dansant le boléro" 1795-1805. This certainly has a lot of charm.

 

Kees Van Dongen "Lady with large hat" - 1906

Picasso (I don't think that I would have guessed). "Demi-nu à la cruche" 1906

 I certainly would not have guessed who had painted this either, even if she had been depicted in many of his paintings. Yes, it's a Toulouse-Lautrec.

"Girl Reading" - 1889

The modern and contemporary art rooms were relatively calm. Two groups were magnetized to different Goya portraits. I was lucky and even if photographs were not allowed, I made up for that when I got home.

Miquel Barcelo (You have seen his work quite

bit on my blog. "The Yellow lake" 1990. They are animals hoping to drink water

A very unusual Van Gogh painted in 1890

"Women at the edge of the river" 1892

"Kula Be Ba Kan" 1991

 This too is unusual for a Paul Gaugin. Usually his women painted in idyallic settings are much larger. Here they seem to be in the distance and much more graceful.










 Miquel Barcelo again.











 

Antoni Tapies "Parallels" -1962

A small spider of Louise Bourgeois - 1998

Willliam de Kooning "No title lV" - 1997

Giacometti and Germaine Richier

Julio Gonzalez ""Daphné" -1937

What a wonderful Picasso. "Portrait of a Young Man" 1900

Egon Schiele "Woman in a blue dress" -1911

As Koplowitz  is such a private person her life story is unknown. She rarely attends social events unless they have been organized by one of her foundations. The collection is eclectic yet the different centuries live together comfortably even if I was drawn to the modern and contemporary work. I’m sure Alicia Koplowitz will go on collecting.