The story of a saga of collectors and the museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga
The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, which is one of the most important art collections of the 20th century, was formed in only two generations. Its precursor was August Thyssen, the second Baron’s grandfather, who exchanged letters with the sculptor Rodin and even acquired several of his works. August’s third son, the first Baron Thyssen, managed to gather together an extremely important core of European artworks dating from the 13th to the 18th century, with the emphasis on portraits.
The second Baron, Hans Heinrich Thyssen, who at only twenty-three years of age was obliged to take up the reins of the Thyssen empire upon his father’s death in 1947, not only managed to hold together his father’s legacy but also made additions to it in the form of works by the German Expressionist school, the Impressionists, the American Post-Impressionists, and the foremost 20th-century tendencies, with a preference for landscape painting. In the course of only a few years the Baron acquired over six hundred exceptional works of art.