BADEN-BADEN.- After a long period of illness, the entrepreneur and art collector Frieder Burda passed away in his home town of Baden-Baden on Sunday with his family at his side. The family, foundation, the museum and the town are united in their great sorrow at his passing.

His belief in the unifying power of art was unbowed, his fascination in the electrifying power of colours was limitless: The passing of Frieder Burda means the world of art loses one of its great collectors, a man who always wished to share his love of and enthusiasm for art with the largest possible number of people. Humanist principles were always more important to him than materialistic considerations, owning art meant for him an obligation to make it accessible to people.

As a friend to the artists, Frieder Burda was keen to exchange views on the origins of art, to be in close contact with and be inspired by the creators of art. In the establishment of his museum and foundation, his generosity has given his home town a place that to this day brings people from all over the world to Baden-Baden. As the chairman of his foundation he was a model of modesty and humanity for his staff. And in his private life, side by side with his wife Elke, he succeeded time and again in bringing family and friends together in the name of art.

Frieder Burda (29th April 1936 – 14th July 2019)
Frieder Burda was born on 29th April 1936 in Gengenbach, Baden-Württemberg, into a renowned German publishing family. He grew up with his older brother Franz, who has already passed away, and his younger brother Hubert, in Offenburg. After his time at school, some of which was spent in Switzerland, he took an apprenticeship in printing and publishing. He then received commercial training in his father’s company. Later, he spent extended periods abroad in France, England and the USA before taking over a printing company in Darmstadt. Under his leadership, the company became one of Europe’s leading commercial printers.

Beginning in 1973, Frieder Burda was based in the Offenburg headquarters of his parents’ magazine publishing house, working in various areas of the printing and publishing operations, with responsibility for finance, administration and investments. However, it was in art that he discovered his real vocation in life. In 1968, when in his early thirties, he bought a painting by Lucio Fontana which he had seen at the documenta exhibition in Kassel, thus laying the foundation stone for his impressive art collection, which now contains around 1,000 works of art including masterpieces by Pablo Picasso, Max Beckmann and ErnstLudwig Kirchner, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning und Mark Rothko, Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz and Sigmar Polke. This first purchase triggered his great passion for paintings, but also saw him develop an extensive knowledge of modern art. This also represented a conscious decision to distance himself from his father’s collection, which focussed on German expressionism.

His life’s work: Museum Frieder Burda
In order to preserve the collection and to make it accessible to the public, the Frieder Burda Foundation was established in Baden-Baden in 1998, after attempts to do so in Mougins in the south of France were abandoned. This paved the way for the construction of the museum, designed by the renowned American architect Richard Meier, which has been home to the Frieder Burda collection since 2004, as well as hosting various international masterpieces. It stands alone, gleaming white, amidst the historical buildings of Lichtentaler Allee, often referred to as the “jewel in the park”.

Numerous notable exhibitions have since been held there, showing works by artists such as Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Katharina Grosse, William N. Copley, Andreas Gursky and James Turrell. In addition, there have been themed exhibitions such as “Die Bilder tun was mit mir” (“The pictures do something to me”) or “America! America!”. The commitment to making art accessible to people in a meaningful way through the museum’s art workshop was a matter of great personal importance for Frieder Burda, who had been awarded “the freedom of the city” of Baden-Baden. In 2014, the tenth anniversary of the museum was celebrated with two large-scale exhibitions entitled “40I10”. To mark the fifteenth anniversary this year, the exhibition “Ensemble” is currently running, a celebration of Franco-German friendship with masterpieces from the Centre Pompidou collection in Paris interacting with works from the Burda collection. The museum hit the headlines at the beginning of the year thanks to its Banksy exhibition. The Salon Berlin, run by his step-daughter Patricia Kamp, sees the museum link up with the world of contemporary art.

Frieder Burda was constantly in search of new impulses and challenges. At the same time, he always remained true to his belief in the unifying power of art. Ever a passionate Francophile, he commented in the catalogue for the current exhibition, “Ensemble”: “The contrasting of the two collections, the placing of individual works of art by German and French artists opposite each other, shows how much art can bring us together, having a positive and complementary influence beyond borders. That makes me happy and reinforces my belief in the universal unifying power of art, in its legitimacy and its continuing existence through all crises”. On 14th July 2019, France’s national holiday, at the age of 83, Frieder Burda passed away at home with his family in Baden-Baden.