Redressing a Spiral Showcase

On Aug. 10, 1939, an enterprising art dealer named Justin K. Thannhauser and an eager collector, Movie Actor Edward G. Robinson, left Paris together, along with their wives, for an art-seeing holiday in Switzerland. Their main goal was an exhibition on loan from the Prado. They saw the Spanish paintings, but the Thannhausers never returned to France. World War II began, and as German-born Jews, they took sanctuary in Switzerland until they could come to New York.

One Stroke. For Thannhauser, opening a gallery in Manhattan was a third start for the family business. His father, Heinrich, had given the Blue Rider group its first exhibition in his Munich gallery in 1911, followed it up a year later with one of the first comprehensive Picasso exhibitions and assured the gallery's fame. With the advent of the Nazis, the family had been forced to flee to Paris and begin again. But of the second Thannhauser collection in Paris, only a few bundled-up paintings, including a rare 1905 Picasso, escaped Nazi confiscation. They were enough to spark a new beginning, and over the years Justin Thannhauser patiently and painstakingly built up a backlog of modern masterpieces that would enrich any museum.

Courted ardently for his collection, Justin Thannhauser recently decided to bequeath the majority of his works to Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum. His reasoning: "My collection complements the museum's." Placed on exhibition last week in newly opened galleries off the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed spiral rotunda, Thannhauser's paintings fit so well into the museum's formerly limited collection that in one stroke they make the Guggenheim a historical showcase of modern art.

Prior to Thannhauser, the museum's sole major benefactor had been its founder, the late Solomon R. Guggenheim. Back in 1928 he had seen his first nonobjective painting and declared, "By Jove, this is beautiful!" Under the guidance of his good friend, Nonobjective Painter Hilla Rebay, he built a lasting collection around paintings by Braque, Picasso, Leger, Klee, Delaunay and Kandinsky. But to represent pre-1900 painting, there were barely half a dozen oils. The Thannhauser gift now adds 21 works predating the 20th century, including six Van Goghs, one Degas, and three more Cezannes. Among newcomers to the museum are Daumier, Manet and Pissarro.

Talisman. Picassos amount to nearly half the bequest; they are particularly welcome, for the gift expands the chameleon career of this master, who has painted through many styles. Thannhauser's Picassos stretch from a 1960 oil of symbolic doves back to a small work of 1898, when the artist still signed his name P. Ruiz Picasso. Next is Picasso's first oil done in Paris, Le Moulin de la Galette, a muted 1900 Lautrecian cabaretscape, gaslit with top hats as sleek and glassy as carafes of absinthe. Included, almost as a talisman, is the 1905 painting of Two Harlequins, one of the few survivors of the Thannhauser Paris collection.

It is rare for a dealer to retain so many masterpieces, perhaps attesting to the quality of what he sold. Even more rarely does a dealer donate such a collection to the public. His profit lies simply in sharing with the world the beauty that he knew best.

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