I signed without discussing the price 100And the project does not advance without hiccups The France is not Frankish and GalloRomanAnd the majority of Orange customers have free stringsA formalization which failed to respond the marketsJacques Bravo is no exception to the ruleAs the second shareholder of Valepar Bradespar 17On the year profits were multiplied by tenThe common market led to redeploy the German industryThis is not all to inherit from a heritageI went in the gallery. I had the air of a delivery man, I know. It first looked at me a suspicious air. I am found with a De Kooning. "Martin Z Margulies is one of the major US collectors, a figure in Miami, but it does not seriously. The man with simple implementation and man air, who built his fortune in real estate, willingly tells debut in the world of art. And its errors... First, in the 1970s, he purchased modern lithographs by Miró, Picasso, Chagall: "It was safe." I didn't have much money and I understood nothing. But I had wanted to persevere. "Then he went to New York, visit the large galleries of the time and starts by buying a realistic sculpture of John de Andrea:"A naked woman." It has interested me for a little simplistic reasons. Could find imperfections seen in a real woman. It had real hair. I was fascinated by the realism that is reached. I still have it. 
Next step: the sales room. "There, there were people that city for really serious money." They were intelligent air. Then too I have bid for a sculpture of Noguchi (1), but I have not achieved it. I ended up acquiring an equivalent model in a dealer for the same price as the award of the day there. But at this stage I did still not understand what I was doing and I wanted to fill my apartment. "Then he went to Manhattan in Xavier Fourcade, a merchant Franco-American installed near the Whitney Museum in 1987 dead, who defended figures of American art, Joan Mitchell, John Chamberlain, Willem De Kooning. "It was a formal man, extreme elegance that contrast with my last, and he looked at me an air when the first time." At home, he buys a monumental sculpture, a "Seated Woman" by the American artist Willem De Kooning. He stressed: "with the merchants, talking, Exchange, we learn.
At the time, this was not a bad idea not to speak with Leo Castelli, the great promoter of the pop artists. What it does. "He was much given me." It was really works. He loved the artists, and business with him was fluid. "In him, he bought including a painting by Jasper Johns in 1959,"0-9"of the famous series numbers, today considered as historical, or another abstract of Frank Stella. "I started to learn the stories behind the paintings." I was looking better. Some work resonated in me. "We are in the early 1980. "I thought needed me a very nice collection." Cannot expose money on the walls.
Martin Margulies became an ambitious collector: he wants a set quite comprehensive and, in a certain way, representative moments keys to contemporary art. Not be prohibited no movement, no country. The principle: he loves and that this suit, as he said "to the rhythm of the collection. Today, he is the head of about 4,000 or 5,000 works. Each was chosen by his care. "A collection reflects the personality of its owner." Me, I did not want guide me in one direction. I wanted to abstract art, pop, the minimum.
Each movement is analyzed by the amateur and holds a special place in his version of the history of art. Pop art "This is a crucial step that or American art is free European references.". Martin Margulies has in this vein three works of Andy Warhol and also, among other things, a surprising bronze painted Roy Lichtenstein of 1977, "Picture and Pitcher". He said: "A the time, Mark Rothko painting was, still marked by European culture." However, it has three paintings by Rothko. "Of the paintings sublime, religious." Later in the 20th century, it also has a work of Juan Miró of the series of "Constellations" of 1940. And warrants: "Miró will have been the most influential of the surrealists on American abstraction of the 1940s.
In the grand zapping directed by Martin Margulies in the history of art, is also the French Christian Boltanski. "An unusual work." Some people may not live with that. But it must go beyond the references to the death camps. His work speaks of humanity. "In the"Warehouse"(), its warehouse open to the public since 1998, it also shows a lot of pictures. "I started by contemporary photographers, the Germans as Andreas Gurski or Thomas Ruff, and then I realized that they were the heirs of earlier work such as of the beginning of the 20th century, August Sander among others (2)" Therefore, the developer of Miami began a collection of modern photographs including Brassaï, Kertész and Cartier-Bresson. Bloated all is shown each year in the horde of visitors to the fair ArtBasel Miami Beach in December. Comment by the person concerned about the social frenzy that accompanies the commercial demonstration: "Miami fair is a circus, boring." Me I am not very sociable. If I want art, I'm going to New York or Paris.
At his home, huge, he retains the paintings, too fragile to be shown at the warehouse, and live the big names of the Americans Cy Twombly Philipp Guston or Jean-Michel Basquiat, of the Italian Piero Manzoni in the French Christian Boltanski, with surprising harmony. A small impressive Museum that shows freedom of taste and the relevance of the eyes of Martin Margulies. Always provocative, the note: "I could live in one piece if I didn't have my collection." But art can better live, meet people everywhere in the world who are interested in the same things as you. And, especially, art allows to keep his sense of humor.
Martin Z Margulies is a developer real estate. He lives in Miami.
