- GENEVA: Ernst Beyeler, whose early eye for undervalued Picassos and Impressionists helped him assemble one of Europe's most famous art collections, has died, his Beyeler Foundation said Friday.
He was 88. Beyeler died Thursday evening at his home near Basel, said a secretary for the museum he created 13 years ago out of his sprawling gallery of masterpieces. She declined to give her name because of museum policy, but confirmed local media reports about Beyeler's death. Beyeler, the son of a Swiss railway employee, 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 eventually grew to a value of at least 2 billion Swiss francs ($1.85 billion), according to the Swiss finance magazine Bilanz, thanks to Beyeler's taste for quality and his personal connections with painters such as Georges Braque, Marc Chagall and Alberto Giacometti. He also was a friend of Picasso.