Siegfried Rosengart
Siegfried Rosengart was a German-Swiss art dealer.
Early life
Rosengart was born in 1894. His parents were Heinrich Rosengart, a bed feather maker, and Selma Thannhauser. His uncles, Joseph Rosengart and Heinrich Thannhauser, were both involved in art.In 1912 Rosengart was influenced by a visit to the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne in 1912, which featured modern art. He met Picasso while studying French in Paris in 1913–14. In 1919, Rosengart joined his uncle Heinrich Thannhauser's gallery. Rosengart opened a branch for Thannhauser in Lucerne in 1920, managing it until 1937. In 1933 he received Swiss citizenship.
Art dealing and collecting
Rosengart's daughter, Angela, joined him in running the gallery in 1948, becoming a partner in 1957.Rosengart sold artworks to museums, like the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf, as well as to private collectors like Etta and Claribel Cone and Samuel Courtauld. He dealt frequently in works by Paul Klee.
He acted as an advisor and intermediary for Bernhard Sprengel and Peter Ludwig.
Rosengart also collected art for his own private collection.
In 1971, he and his daughter Angela donated a Picasso painting to the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1971. In 1978, with eight artworks, they created a small Picasso museum for the city of Lucerne, adding about 200 photographs of Picasso by David Douglas Duncan in 1992.