Baron Hans Thyssen, 81; Billionaire Art Collector

Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza, billionaire industrialist and man about the world who amassed the finest private art collection second only to that of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, has died. He was 81.

Thyssen died early Saturday of a heart attack at his home in Sant Feliu de Guixols north of Barcelona, Spain, according to an announcement by the Thyssen Museum in Madrid.

The custodian of a three-generation fortune and two-generation title, Thyssen seemed to enjoy the notoriety that his far-flung interests generated.

A bona fide jet-setter in the 1960s and ‘70s, he crisscrossed the Atlantic to sit on the boards of about 30 corporations, buy art and court world beauties.

Born to a German father and Hungarian mother, he was a native of the Netherlands, became a Swiss citizen in 1950, and for tax advantages lived primarily in Monte Carlo.

He married five women and divorced four--German Princess Teresa of Lippe, model Nina Dyer of England, model Fiona Campbell-Walker of Scotland and heiress Liliane Denise Shorto of Brazil. His fifth wife, the former Miss Spain, Maria del Carmen Rosario “Tita” Cervera Fernandez, survives and was with him when he died.

The fortune began with Thyssen’s grandfather, August Thyssen, the son of a German pharmacist and founder of a steel mill in the industrial Ruhr district that made chicken wire and other staples of the 19th century.

Although August didn’t begin the fabled art collection, he enjoyed art and befriended sculptor Auguste Rodin.

Thyssen’s father, also named Heinrich, began the nomadic meandering, the diversification of business interests and the buying of Old Masters, which Thyssen would perfect.

The third of August Thyssen’s sons, Heinrich immigrated to Hungary in 1905 and married Baroness Margit Bornemisza de Kaszon, the daughter of the king’s chamberlain. With no sons of his own, the chamberlain passed his title to his son-in-law, who added Bornemisza (meaning “doesn’t drink wine,” a description that never fit Thyssen’s father or son) to his name.

Fleeing communism in Hungary after World War I, he moved the family to the Netherlands, where Hans Heinrich, or “Heini” as he was known, was born on April 13, 1921.

Fleeing Nazi influences and the approach of World War II, the family moved to Switzerland, where the elder Thyssen bought an 18th-century villa near Lugano and named it Villa Favorita. There the growing art collection would hang for several decades.

Ironically, August Thyssen’s oldest son and Heini’s uncle, Fritz, who remained in Germany and in the family steel business, became one of Hitler’s earliest and most ardent supporters, providing funds for the Nazi cause.

He later denounced Hitler and was imprisoned by the Nazis and, after the war, by the Allies for his changing allegiances.

At his father’s death in 1947, Heini Thyssen inherited the title of baron and his father’s love and lust for art, money and women--in no certain order.

As his father had diversified from steel into banking and shipping, Thyssen further diversified family business interests to include glass, plastics, automobile parts and container leasing.

He gradually began to diversify the art collection to include 20th-century works, which his father had famously called “rubbish.” The original collection of more than 400 works, however, had been divided with Thyssen’s two siblings, and he spent 15 years or so buying it back to keep the collection intact.

Heini Thyssen vastly increased the art collection, adding German and French Impressionists, fauvists, Russian avant-garde, and American early art, including works by John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer and modern and pop art by such artists as Roy Lichtenstein and David Hockney. Opening Villa Favorita to the public, he also lent his paintings generously for exhibits around the world.

“You can lock paintings in a bedroom or on a shelf, but they are not painted for that purpose,” Thyssen told The Times in 1980, when the nine-city tour of 57 “Old Master Paintings from the Collection of Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza” stopped at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Annemarie H. Pope, president and founder of the Washington-based International Exhibitions Foundation, which organized and circulated the show, described it for The Times then as “about the best of the 100 [exhibitions] we have sent in our 15-year history.”

In 1983, Thyssen’s “American Masters: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection,” featuring works by John Singleton Copley, Sargent, Edward Hopper and Georgia O’Keeffe, was exhibited at the San Diego Museum of Art. In 1985, his “20th Century Masters: The Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection,” featuring works by Picasso and Kandinsky, was presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Thyssen’s $2-billion art trove was sought by governments and museums around the world, prompting him to joke: “I keep a list of countries from Albania to Zululand that want my collection.”

He was courted locally by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Getty Museum, which reportedly once offered $3.5 billion to buy his paintings, sculptures and tapestries for its new $1-billion showcase facility.

Approaching art much as he did business--and angered by Switzerland’s refusal to help pay for displaying the collection at Lugano--Thyssen ended speculation in 1988 by turning to Spain. He leased much of his collection to the government of Spain for about $6 million a year with an option to buy.

Despite controversy and anger from art aficionados who felt Thyssen should donate rather than sell the art, the Spanish Parliament approved the transaction in 1990 and bought 775 works in 1993 for a bargain-basement price of $350 million.

Thyssen’s fifth wife has been credited with persuading him to move the priceless collection to her native country.

Spain gained further favor by spending $45 million to renovate the early 19th-century Villahermosa Palace near the Prado Museum in central Madrid to house most of the works. The remainder of the purchased art is displayed in a restored monastery outside Barcelona.

John Walsh, the Getty Museum’s director at the time Spain acquired the art, was philosophical about Thyssen’s selling rather than giving away his collection, noting for The Times: “He had to settle [his financial affairs] with his children, and the largest part of his assets were tied up with works of art. He is a good businessman who knows his collection has a large value and that it is not legally tied to Lugano.... He explored many possibilities to come to an arrangement with his heirs and to put the collection in a place that pleased him.”

Earlier this year, Thyssen settled lengthy and expensive litigation in Bermuda with his eldest son, Georg, over control of the $2.7-billion family empire. He had claimed the son, who controls the Thyssen-Bornemisza Group, failed to pay him about $232 million in proceeds from the Bermuda-based family trust. The yearlong litigation cost about $100 million in legal fees.

Thyssen, whose body will be buried in the family mausoleum at Schloss Landsberg in Germany, is survived by his wife; her son Borja, whom he adopted; and four children from his first four marriages: Francesca, Georg, Lorne and Wilfred.