Art
In 1969, at age twenty-six Saatchi purchased his first work of art by Sol LeWitt, a New York minimalist. He initially patronised the Lisson Gallery in Marylebone, London, who specialised in minimalist works, he purchased an entire show by Robert Mangold. On a visit to Paris in 1973 with his first wife, Doris Lockhart, he purchased a realist work by the British artist David Hepher, a detailed realist depiction of suburban houses. In the early 1980s, Doris and Saatchi purchased a 30,000 sq ft (2,800 m2) cement-floored and steel-girded warehouse at 98A Boundary Road in the residential London suburb of St. John's Wood. The Saatchi Gallery was opened to the public in February 1985, to exhibit the art Saatchi had collected.
At one point the Saatchi collection contained eleven works by Donald Judd, twenty-one by Sol LeWitt, twenty-three by Anselm Kiefer, seventeen Andy Warhols and twenty-seven by Julian Schnabel.
His taste has mutated from "School of London", through American abstraction and minimalism, to the Young British Artists, whose work he first saw at the Freeze exhibition. Any purchase by Charles Saatchi made news. In 1991, he turned his back on the New York art world with two major acquisitions by new British artists. He was instrumental in 1992 in launching the career of Damien Hirst and in bringing Marc Quinn to the forefront of the art world. His renown as a patron peaked in 1997 when part of his collection was shown at the Royal Academy as the exhibition Sensation, which travelled to Berlin and New York causing headlines and much offence (e.g., to families of children murdered by Myra Hindley) and consolidating the position of the YBAs.
In 2009, he published the book My Name Is Charles Saatchi And I Am An Artoholic. Subtitled "Everything You Need To Know About Art, Ads, Life, God And Other Mysteries And Weren't Afraid To Ask", it presents Saatchi's answers to a number of questions submitted by members of the public and art fraternity. From November to December 2009 he had a television programme on the BBC called School of Saatchi in which he gave young aspiring artists an opportunity to showcase their work. He made no appearance in the programme, only communicating through an assistant.
In July 2010, Charles Saatchi donated the Saatchi Gallery and over 200 works of art to the British public.
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