Editing Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler

{{Short description|German-born art collector and art dealer}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2023}}
{{Infobox person
| name          = Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler
| image         = Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler.jpg
| image_size    = 230px
| alt           = 
| caption       = Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1956
| birth_name    = 
| birth_date    = {{Birth date|1884|6|25|df=y}}
| birth_place   = [[Mannheim]], [[Grand Duchy of Baden|Baden]], [[German Empire|Germany]]
| death_date    = {{Death date and age|1979|1|11|1884|6|25|df=y}}
| death_place   = Paris, France
| nationality   = 
| other_names   = 
| occupation    = Art dealer, historian
| years_active  = 
| known_for     = 
| notable_works = 
}}

'''Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler''' (25 June 1884 – 11 January 1979) was a German-born art collector, and one of the most notable French [[art dealer]]s of the 20th century. He became prominent as an art gallery owner in Paris beginning in 1907 and was among the first champions of [[Pablo Picasso]], [[Georges Braque]] and the [[Cubism|Cubist]] movement in art.<ref name="JR">{{cite book |authorlink=John Richardson (art historian) |first=John |last=Richardson |title=A Life Of Picasso, The Cubist Rebel, 1907-1916 |page=[https://archive.org/details/lifeofpicasso00rich/page/36 36] |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |date=1991 |isbn=978-0-307-26665-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/lifeofpicasso00rich/page/36 }}</ref>

==Early life==
Kahnweiler was born in 1884 in [[Mannheim]], [[Grand Duchy of Baden|Baden]] to a prosperous Jewish family.<ref name="patrons">DANIEL-HENRY KAHNWEILER –. (21 September 2017). PATRONS. https://patrons.org.es/kahnweiler-daniel-henry/</ref> His family had previously moved from [[Rockenhausen]], a small village in the [[Palatinate (region)|Palatinate]]. Kahnweiler grew up in [[Stuttgart]] and was trained to study finance and philosophy.<ref name="patrons"/> His upbringing and education at a German [[Gymnasium (school)|Gymnasium]] prepared him for his life as an art connoisseur and pragmatic businessman. Early employment in the family business of [[Stockbroker|stock brokerage]] in Germany and Paris gave way to an interest in art collecting while Kahnweiler was still in his twenties. He opened his first small art gallery (4 by 4 meters) in Paris in 1907 at 28 rue Vignon, at age 23.<ref name="patrons"/> There was a family precedent for such an enterprise, since his uncle, who ran a famous stock brokerage house in [[London]], was a major art collector of traditional English art works and furniture.<ref name="JR" />

==Art dealer==
[[File:Picasso Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler 1910.jpg|thumb|[[Pablo Picasso]], 1910, ''[[Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler]]'', oil on canvas, [[Art Institute of Chicago]]]]
Kahnweiler is considered to have been one of the greatest supporters of the [[Cubism|Cubist]] art movement through his activities as an art dealer and spokesman for artists. He was among the first people to recognize the importance and beauty of Picasso's ''[[Les Demoiselles d'Avignon]]'' and immediately wanted to buy it along with all of Picasso's works. Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler, "What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense?" Kahnweiler's appreciation of Picasso's talents was especially gratifying to the artist, since he was largely unknown and destitute at the time when many of his most famous works were created.<ref name="JR" />

In his gallery, Kahnweiler supported many of the great artists of his time who found themselves without adequate recognition and little or no interest among collectors. Initial purchases included works by [[Kees van Dongen]], [[André Derain]], [[André Masson]], [[Fernand Léger]], [[Georges Braque]], [[Juan Gris]], [[Maurice de Vlaminck]] and several other artists of the same generation. To use his own word, Kahnweiler wanted to "defend" great artists, but only those who had no dealers and of whose talents he was convinced. Rather than exhibiting appealing works by established artists from the past and present, Kahnweiler championed burgeoning artists who had come from all over the globe to live and work in [[Montparnasse]] and [[Montmartre]] at the time. Thus [[Paul Cézanne]], although a great artist, was considered too old to be represented, and his work was already represented by the dealer [[Ambroise Vollard]] in any case.<ref name= "JR" />

[[File:Kees van Dongen, c.1907-08, Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, oil on canvas, 65 x 54 cm.jpg|thumb|[[Kees van Dongen]], c. 1907-08, ''Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler'', oil on canvas, Musée du Petit Palais, Geneva]]
Along with such men as [[Alfred Flechtheim]], [[Paul Cassirer]], [[Daniel Wildenstein]], [[Léonce Rosenberg]] and [[Paul Rosenberg (art dealer)|Paul Rosenberg]], Kahnweiler was one of the influential art connoisseurs of the 20th century. As a businessman, Kahnweiler pioneered many new methods of working with artists and art dealing; these are now established practices in the industry.

In 1907, when there were only half a dozen viable galleries in Paris, he made contracts with artists to buy all of their work in order to free them from financial worries and permit them to concentrate on their creative work. He met with them daily to discuss their work, photographed each work they produced (he felt it imperative to have a record), held exhibitions of their work and promoted their work internationally. Since he considered himself friends with many of them, he co-owned little sailing boats with his artists.

As part of his activities in promoting the work of emerging artists, Kahnweiler sponsored the first exhibition of the work of [[Georges Braque]]. He encouraged the practice of publishing ''Beaux Livres'' (beautiful books), in which a contemporary artist would illustrate a work of a contemporary writer. He expanded his presentations by bringing together artists, writers and poets to produce their works as a joint project in more than 40 books. Picasso, for example, illustrated the works of [[Max Jacob]]. As a publisher of art with literary works, he had no equal, and was the first to sponsor publications by Max Jacob, [[Guillaume Apollinaire]], [[André Masson]], [[Gertrude Stein]], [[Pablo Picasso]], and many others. In doing so, he launched many literary careers.

Kahnweiler's entrepreneurial abilities were so acute that by the 1950s his art gallery was among the top 100 French companies in terms of export figures.

==Art history==
Although the financial support for artists was an important contribution to art history, he was also a significant figure for his work as an art historian and eyewitness to the emergence of Cubism during the period 1907–1914. When working in Paris, his spare time was devoted to reading and understanding the [[history of art]] and [[aesthetics]]. He also spent his time visiting the city's museums and art galleries. Besides the museums in Paris, he took trips around the European continent to see what was being shown in museums and art galleries outside France. He gave his first interview on Cubism in 1912, and it was actual historical events that led to his career as a historian. There is a view that Kahnweiler's sensibility was such that his gallery, and the way he styled and developed it, was as much a Cubist gallery as were the paintings by Picasso and the other Cubist painters. The gallery had a clear aesthetic position, uncompromising integrity, financial stability and creative development. During the years 1907-1914 his gallery was a central cradle for Cubism, not only to display the works, but where one also met the artists.

Concurrently, the primary means for avant-garde painters and sculptors to show their works to a wider audience remained the [[Société des Artistes Indépendants|Salon des Indépendants]] and the [[Salon d'Automne]]. Kahnweiler forbade his 'gallery Cubists' from exhibiting at these major Salons,<ref name="Taylor, 2010">[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aN9MriMKsE Michael Taylor, 2010, Philadelphia Museum of Art, ''Modern and Contemporary'' 439, Metzinger - ''Tea Time'' (''Woman with a Teaspoon''), 1 Audio Stop 439, Podcast]</ref> and by so doing, actually removed them from public view. From the viewpoint of the general public, Cubism came to be more associated with the 'Salon Cubists', such as [[Jean Metzinger]],<ref name="Taylor, 2010" /> [[Albert Gleizes]], [[Fernand Léger]], [[Robert Delaunay]], [[Henri Le Fauconnier]], [[Marcel Duchamp]] and [[Francis Picabia]].<ref name="Edwards, Wood">[https://books.google.com/books?id=TU0KwJuBvAsC&dq=kahnweiler+gallery+cubists+vs+salon+cubists&pg=PA136 Steve Edwards, Paul Wood, ''Art of the Avant-gardes''], Yale University Press, 2004, {{ISBN|0300102305}}</ref>

==World War I and World War II==
[[File:Juan Gris Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler 1921.jpg|thumb|right|Pencil drawing of Kahnweiler by [[Juan Gris]], 1921, [[Musée National d'Art Moderne]], Paris]]
The outbreak of World War I in 1914 not only ruptured the Cubist experiments in art, but also forced Kahnweiler to live in exile in Switzerland; due to his German citizenship, he was considered an [[Alien (law)|alien]] under French law. Many German nationals living in France had their possessions sequestered by the French state, and as a result, Kahnweiler's collection was confiscated in 1914 and sold by the government in a series of auctions at the [[Hôtel Drouot]] between 1921 and 1923.<ref>Malcolm Gee, Dealers, Critics and Collectors of Modern Painting; Aspects of the Parisian Art Market Between 1910 and 1930, Courtauld PhD Dissertation 1977, p. 25</ref><ref>[http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15324coll18/id/45980 Kahnweiler collection: Catalogue des tableaux, aquarelles, gouaches et dessins. Part II,  Hôtel Drouot, Paris, November 17-18, 1921]</ref>

Among these was [[Pablo Picasso]]'s "Buffalo Bill," which Kahnweiler acquired from Picasso in 1912 and was auctioned at Hôtel Drouot in the "Fourth Sale of Sequestered Art," May 7-8, 1923, and bought in auction at [[Christie's]] for $12,412,500 on Nov. 17, 2022.<ref>https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6397621 {{Bare URL inline|date=August 2024}}</ref>

During the years of exile (until 1920), Kahnweiler studied and wrote works such as the ''Der Weg zum Kubismus'' and ''Confessions esthétiques''. Writing becoming a passion he continued over his lifetime, and he authored hundreds of books and major articles. The second period of enforced writing came during a period of internal exile caused by the events of World War II.  As a Jew, the [[Nazi]]s forced him to flee Paris. He remained in France, in hiding. "Under the clouds from the [[gas chamber]]s," as he put it in his seminal work on [[Juan Gris]].

==At the end==
Kahnweiler was very prolific as an author, but never produced a full autobiography. There was, however, a series of interviews first aired on French television, then published and translated as a book under the title ''Mes galleries et mes peintres'' ("My galleries and my painters"). For his 80th birthday, a ''[[Festschrift]]'' was published with contributions by the world's leading philosophers, art historians, and artists, all of whom emphasized the vital importance of his unique contribution to art history – an importance still not yet fully appreciated, probably due to the fact that he has been viewed mostly as an art dealer and not as an [[art historian]]. This situation has been aggravated because some of his major works on [[aesthetics]] were either never translated into English or badly translated. The omission of key elements of a proper understanding of Cubism and focus on small and sensational elements of his complex relationship with Picasso has led to a flawed understanding of the ideas he put forward in these writings.{{Citation needed|date=October 2009}}

Although revered by artists for his business and aesthetic sense and respected by art dealers and art historians, the true impact of his life and work has yet to be recognized, despite a 1988 biography by [[Pierre Assouline]]. He died in 1979 in Paris, aged 94.

==Sources==
*[[John Richardson (art historian)|John Richardson]], ''A Life of Picasso: The Prodigy, 1881–1906'', Publ. [[Alfred A. Knopf]], 1991, {{ISBN|978-0-307-26666-8}}
*[[John Richardson (art historian)|John Richardson]], ''A Life of Picasso: The Cubist Rebel, 1907-1916'', Publ. [[Alfred A. Knopf]], 1991, {{ISBN|978-0-307-26665-1}}
*Malcolm Gee, '' Dealers, critics, and collectors of modern painting: aspects of the Parisian art market between 1910 and 1930'', London, Garland, 1981.

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==External links==
* [http://www.vaclavchochola.cz/Osobnosti/Kahnweiller/Kahnweiller.html D. H. Kahnweiler on photographs by Vaclav Chochola]
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20090221160929/http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/122505/Montparnasse-Revisited-The-Man-Behind-Picasso-Daniel-Henry-Kahnweiler/overview ''New York Times'' review of Bio pic, retrieved online April 26, 2008]

{{Pablo Picasso}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Kahnweiler, Daniel-Henry}}
[[Category:French art dealers]]
[[Category:French art collectors]]
[[Category:French art historians]]
[[Category:German art dealers]]
[[Category:German art collectors]]
[[Category:20th-century German art collectors]]
[[Category:German art historians]]
[[Category:Jewish French artists]]
[[Category:Jewish German artists]]
[[Category:Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to France]]
[[Category:Jewish art collectors]]
[[Category:Businesspeople from Mannheim]]
[[Category:Stockbrokers]]
[[Category:1884 births]]
[[Category:1979 deaths]]
[[Category:French male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:German male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:20th-century French male writers]]
[[Category:Art gallery owners]]