Frieder Burda (29 April 1936 – 14 July 2019, in

Baden-Baden Baden-Baden () is a spa town in the states of Germany, state of Baden-Württemberg, south-western Germany, at the north-western border of the Black Forest mountain range on the small river Oos (river), Oos, ten kilometres (six miles) east of the ...

) was a German art collector and

Honorary Citizen Honorary citizenship is a status bestowed by a city or other government on a foreign or native individual whom it considers to be especially admirable or otherwise worthy of the distinction. The honour usually is symbolic and does not confer an ...

Life

Born on 29 April 1936 in

Gengenbach Gengenbach (; gsw, label= Low Alemannic, Gängäbach) is a town in the district of Ortenau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, and a popular tourist destination on the western edge of the Black Forest, with about 11,000 inhabitants. Gengenbach is well ...

, Burda was the second son of publisher

Franz Burda Franz Burda (24 February 1903 – 30 September 1986) was a German publisher. He inherited his father's publishing business, which he developed into what is now the Hubert Burda Media conglomerate. Early life and family Burda was born in Phi ...

and his wife

Aenne Burda Aenne Burda (28 July 1909 – 3 November 2005), born Anna Magdalene Lemminger, was a German publisher of the Burda Group, a media group based in Offenburg and Munich, Germany. She was one of the symbols of the German economic miracle. Biograph ...

(née Lemminger). Together with his older brother and his younger brother

Hubert Hubert is a Germanic masculine given name, from ''hug'' "mind" and '' beraht'' "bright". It also occurs as a surname. Saint Hubertus or Hubert (c. 656 – 30 May 727) is the patron saint of hunters, mathematicians, opticians, and metalworkers ...

, Burda grew up in

Offenburg Offenburg ("open borough" - coat of arms showing open gates; Low Alemannic German, Low Alemmanic: ''Offäburg'') is a city located in the state of Baden-Württemberg, Germany. With nearly 60,000 inhabitants (2019), it is the largest city and the ad ...

. After finishing

school A school is an educational institution designed to provide learning spaces and learning environments for the teaching of students under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of formal education, which is sometimes compuls ...

in Offenburg,

Triberg Triberg im Schwarzwald is a town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, located in the Schwarzwald-Baar district in the Black Forest. In 2020, it had a population of 4,656. Triberg lies in the middle of the Black Forest between 500 and 1038 metres above ...

and

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

, he completed a print and a publishing qualification. Burda was trained in his father's business group. Later he lived in France and became a magazine publisher. He spent several years in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

before becoming a printer in

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...

. He developed his company into one of the leading commercial print foundries in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

. Burda died on 14 July 2019 in Baden-Baden at the age of 83.

Art collection

Baden-Baden 10-2015 img39 Museum Frieder Burda

A major art collector, Burda bought his first work, a slashed red painting by

Lucio Fontana Lucio Fontana (; 19 February 1899 – 7 September 1968) was an Argentine-Italian painter, sculptor and theorist. He is mostly known as the founder of Spatialism. Early life Born in Rosario, to Italian immigrant parents, he was t ...

, at Kassel’s Documenta 4 in 1968. In building his collection, he took advice from art-historian friends, including

Werner Spies Werner Spies (born 1 April 1937 in Tübingen) is a German art historian, journalist and exhibition organizer. From 1997 to 2000, he was a director of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Klaus Albrecht Schröder, director of the Albertina in Vienn ...

Götz Adriani Götz Adriani (born 21 November 1940 in Stuttgart) is a German art historian. Born as the son of an art historian (Gert Adriani), he studied history of art, archaeology and history at the universities of Munich, Vienna and Tübingen, earning a ...

and Jean-Louis Prat. Burda initially planned to build a museum near

Mougins Mougins (; oc, Mogins ; la, Muginum ) is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes département in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in Southeastern France. In 2019, it had a population of 19,982. It is located on the heights of Cannes, in the a ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

, where he had a house. In 2004, he opened

Museum Frieder Burda A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make thes ...

in Baden-Baden, in a €20 million building designed by architect

Richard Meier Richard Meier (born October 12, 1934) is an American abstract artist and architect, whose geometric designs make prominent use of the color white. A winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1984, Meier has designed several iconic buildings ...

. The collection includes more than 700 works, including several late masterpieces by

Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

and major holdings of Germany's important postwar artists, such as

Gerhard Richter Gerhard Richter (; born 9 February 1932) is a German visual artist. Richter has produced abstract as well as photorealistic paintings, and also photographs and glass pieces. He is widely regarded as one of the most important contemporary German ...

and

Sigmar Polke Sigmar Polke (13 February 1941 – 10 June 2010) was a German painter and photographer. Polke experimented with a wide range of styles, subject matters and materials. In the 1970s, he concentrated on photography, returning to paint in the 1980s ...

, plus a few pieces from his father's collection. The focus is on German painting, from artists ranging from

Max Beckmann Max Carl Friedrich Beckmann (February 12, 1884 – December 27, 1950) was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement. In the 1920 ...

Eugen Schönebeck Eugen is a masculine given name which may refer to: * Archduke Eugen of Austria (1863–1954), last Habsburg Grandmaster of the Teutonic Order from 1894 to 1923 * Prince Eugen, Duke of Närke (1865–1947), Swedish painter, art collector, and pat ...

Georg Baselitz Georg Baselitz (born 23 January 1938) is a German painter, sculptor and graphic artist. In the 1960s he became well known for his figurative, expressive paintings. In 1969 he began painting his subjects upside down in an effort to overcome the ...

Corinne Wasmuht Corinne Wasmuht (born 1964) is a German visual artist based in Berlin."Corinne Wasmuht CV" ...

. Following its opening in October 2004, the museum drew 40,000 visitors in its first two months. Only a sampling of the permanent collection can be displayed at one time (many works continue to be lent to special exhibitions and other museums). The two-story glass and aluminum building itself is set on the edge of the main park in the town connected by a glass-sheathed bridge to the existing small Baden-Baden art museum, the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. A stand of enormous trees, including historic oaks and a blood beech, tower over the buildings. Meier's building won the American Institute of Architects Honor Award for Architecture in 2006.

J.S. Marcus J. S. Marcus is an American novelist. His work appeared in '' Harper's'', ''The New York Review of Books'', and ''The Wall Street Journal,'' where he regularly writes about real estate and art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and ...

(June 9, 2006)
Private Collection Shines in Its Own Museum
''

Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

''.

References

External links

Museum Frieder Burda website
1936 births 2019 deaths German art collectors People from Gengenbach 20th-century art collectors Museum founders {{Germany-business-bio-stub