Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America

Archives related to: Berggruen, Heinz

titleArtist file: Berggruen, Heinz; miscellaneous uncataloged material.
repositoryThe Museum of Modern Art
descriptionPamphlet file
The folder may include announcements, clippings, press releases, brochures, reviews, invitations, small exhibition catalogs, and other ephemeral material.

Location
MoMA Queens Artist Files

Call Number
BERGGRUEN, HEINZ

extent1 folder
formatsEphemera
accessContact repository for restrictions and policies.
record sourcehttps://library.nyarc.org/permalink/01NYA_INST/ai54l4/alma991009815529707141
updated03/16/2023 10:29:51
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titleCurt Valentin papers, 1937-1955.
repositoryThe Museum of Modern Art
descriptionThe papers include Valentin's correspondence with the artists Paul Klee, Ludwig Kirchner, Hans Arp, Jacques Lipchitz, Gerhard Marcks, Lyonel Feininger, Max Beckmann, Alexander Calder, Mary Callery, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Marino Marini, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and Pablo Picasso. There is also documentation relating to most of the exhibitions held at the Buchholz and Curt Valentin galleries.

There is extensive correspondece with private collectors (including David Thomson and Douglas Cooper), other art dealers (Heinz Berggruen, Rolf Burgi, and D.-H. Kahnweiler), as well as institutions worldwide (museums, universities, etc.) which bought and borrowed art work from the Valentin Gallery.

Biographical/historical note
Curt Valentin was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1902. After completing his education, he became a dealer in modern art in Berlin. In 1934 he returned to Hamburg and worked in the Buchholz Gallery, owned by Karl Buchholz. This gallery comprised two businesses: a bookstore in the front, and, in the rear, an art gallery devoted to the modern art classified as "degenerate" by the Nazis.

In 1937 Valentin emigrated to the U.S. with a sufficient number of modern German paintings to open a gallery under the Buchholz name in New York City. In 1951 the gallery was renamed the Curt Valentin Gallery.
Widely respected as one of the most astute dealers in modern art, Valentin organized influential exhibitions and attracted major artists to his gallery. His enthusiasm for sculpture is revealed by the artists and exhibitions he selected. He also published several distinguished, limited-edition books in which the writings of poets and novelists were illustrated by a contemporary artists.

Valentin died of a heart attact in Aug. 1954, while visiting Marino Marini in Italy. One year later the gallery was liquidated and some of the work from it was sold at a Parke-Bernet auction in Nov. 1955. Several of Valentin's artists, as well as his assistant, Jane Wade, joined the Otto Gerson Gallery, which, after Gerson's death in 1962, became the Marlborough-Gerson Gallery.

Location
MoMA Museum Archives

Call Number
Valentin papers
extent42 linear ft.
formatsCorrespondence Photographs Financial Records
accessAccess to the papers is restricted to serious scholars. Requests to consult the papers must be submitted in writing.
record linkhttp://www.moma.org/research/archives/EAD/Valentinf.html
record sourcehttps://library.nyarc.org/permalink/01NYA_INST/ai54l4/alma991006755269707141
finding aidFinding aid available in the repository.
updated11/29/2022 15:49:50
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titleGloria de Herrera papers, 1936-1996 (bulk 1947-1985).
repositoryThe Getty Research Institute
descriptionThe papers consist of ca. 750 items documenting De Herrera’s milieu and activities.

Series I. Correspondence: ca. 180 letters and related items, of De Herrera or of James Byrnes acting on her behalf. Correspondents include Heinz Berggruen, James and Barbara Byrnes, Dominique Darbois, Lydia Delectorskaya, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, Françoise Gilot, Adolfo Kaminsky, Edouard Loeb, Henri and Amélie Matisse, Pierre Matisse, Franz Meyer, Wolfgang Paalen and Man Ray. The series also contains letters by William Nelson Copley, as well as some from Russian correspondents whom De Herrera met in the Soviet Union in 1957.

Series II. Documents: ca. 170 items, comprising De Herrera’s writings, records of her Matisse work and her work on Darbois’s Enfants du monde series, newspaper clippings, arrest records, passport fragments detailing her travels, medical reports and records from the end of her life. Of interest are drafts of ten short essays by William Nelson Copley regarding life in France in 1951, including a visit to Picasso’s studio in Vallauris.

Series III. Artworks: 22 artworks, 68 photographs of artworks and 7 exhibition announcements. Includes drawings by Victor Brauner, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Roberto Matta and Bernard Pfriem, a watercolor by Françoise Gilot, and a very small oil painting by William Nelson Copley. Of particular interest are the Échantillons Matisse, a set of 72 fragments of unfaded gouached paper left over from her Matisse work, along with 10 full-sized gouached sheets. Photographs of artworks and exhibition announcements document works by Brauner, Calder, Copley, Joseph Cornell, Max Ernst, Gilot, Ynez Johnston, Henri Matisse, Matta, Claude Monet, Piet Mondrian, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy and Dorothea Tanning.

Series IV. Photographs: 244 photographs, 37 photocopies and 1 related item documenting De Herrera’s friendships, activities and interests, predominantly in Los Angeles and France. Most notably represented are Man Ray and his wife Juliet, William Nelson Copley, Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning; also included are Victor Brauner, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp, Paul Eluard, Alberto Giacometti, Françoise Gilot, Wolfgang Paalen, Valentine and Roland Penrose, Pablo Picasso, Henri-Pierre Roché, Yves Tanguy, and Marcel Zerbib. Of special interest is De Herrera’s scrapbook, documenting her life from ca. 1950 to 1953, with views of Max Ernst’s homes in Sedona and St. Martin d’Ardèche, and snapshots from the visit to Picasso in Vallauris. Also of interest are photographs taken by De Herrera at a 1947 Just Jazz concert in Pasadena, featuring Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and other jazz musicians. Further included are a picture of De Herrera working on a Matisse collage, and images from De Herrera’s 1957 trip to the Soviet Union. Photographs documenting the Algerian revolution were likely taken by Dominique Darbois.

Series V. Oversize materials: 7 items, including an oil painting by Copley entitled Gloria, a photographic reproduction of a Matisse drawing, and printed documents including a transcript of George Dondero’s 1949 Senate address, Modern art shackled to Communism.

Series VI. Audiovisual materials: 3 items, a taped 1983 interview of De Herrera conducted by James B. Byrnes and a videotaped 1996 interview of Byrnes conducted by Dickran Tashjian. 1 computer disc contains the transcript of Byrnes interview with De Herrera.
extentca. 3 linear ft. (11 boxes) + ADDS (2 boxes)
formatsCorrespondence Photographs Sound Recording Clippings Ephemera
accessOpen for use by qualified researchers.
record linkhttp://archives2.getty.edu:8082/xtf/view?docId=ead/980024/980024.xml;query=;brand=default
record sourcehttp://hdl.handle.net/10020/cat501310
finding aidAvailable online and unpublished finding aid available in the repository: folder level control.
acquisition informationJames and Barbara Byrnes.
updated11/12/2014 11:29:54
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