Museum Sammlung Rosengart

‘We don't have a collection,’ art dealer Siegfried Rosengart once said to his daughter Angela. ‘We just have nice pictures.’ Donated by Angela (who followed her father into the business) to a foundation she set up in 1992, those pictures now grace the walls of Museum Sammlung Rosengart. They comprise 180 paintings, drawings, watercolours, graphic and sculptural pieces by Picasso, 125 works by Paul Klee and others by classical modernist heroes including Miro, Chagall, Braque and Matisse. Early champions of Klee, the Rosengarts befriended Picasso in the 1950s, and he painted five portraits of Angela, which are on display here, among depictions of the tireless Spaniard’s various mistresses. Perhaps the most remarkable of his works here are those from his last years, which show an undimmed intensity, even as the artist edged towards 90. Overall, the collection is all the more poignant for being a personal selection, chosen with the heart as much as the head. The Rosengarts claim never to have bought a painting they didn’t mean to sell to a client. The outstanding artworks that all of us can now visit here are the ones they just couldn’t part with.