Guy Ullens, a Belgian billionaire who constructed up one of the essential collections of Chinese language up to date artwork on the earth, has died at 90. The information was introduced on social media by the UCCA Heart for Up to date Artwork in Beijing, which Ullens had cofounded. The museum didn’t present a trigger.
“As one of many earliest worldwide collectors to champion Chinese language artists, Ullens helped deliver international recognition to Chinese language artists and their work,” the UCCA stated on Instagram. “His devoted efforts additionally formed the muse for UCCA’s progress into the establishment we’re in the present day, in China and globally. … We keep in mind him with deep respect and gratitude. His legacy endures—within the establishments he based, the artists he championed, and within the communities he helped construct—and can proceed to form and encourage UCCA’s work and mission.”
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Ullens started accumulating artwork within the Sixties “with a deal with new territories and pioneer artists,” in keeping with his eponymous basis’s website. However when he first began doing enterprise in China in 1984, his accumulating pursuits took a flip that might in the end outline his legacy.
Initially, he started shopping for Chinese language antiquities, together with scroll work from the Music, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. That led him to fulfill Chinese language up to date artists like Ai Weiwei at a second when the scene was considerably increasing, as Ullens told the Wall Avenue Journal in 2013.
Together with his late spouse Myriam, Ullens would go on to purchase essential works by Liu Xiaodong, Liu Wei, Zeng Fanzhi, Huang Yong Ping, Wang Keping, and extra, typically for comparatively low costs. His assortment would finally comprise between 1,500 and a couple of,000 works, with a lot of it saved in Geneva. The couple ranked on the ARTnews Prime 200 Collectors record every year between 2008 and 2015.
In 2007, the couple established the Ullens Heart for Up to date Artwork in Beijing’s 798 Artwork Zone as a personal museum for his or her assortment. The establishment will be partially credited with setting off a wave of personal museums that sprung up in China within the decade that adopted.
The Ullenses sought a purchaser for his or her museum in 2016, promoting it to Chinese language buyers in 2017. The establishment was then renamed the UCCA Heart for Up to date Artwork.
Along with supporting artists, Ullens additionally helped set up a secondary marketplace for Chinese language up to date artwork, promoting works from the gathering through the years, together with in 2017, when when he and his spouse auctioned off 50 works. One such consignment, Zeng’s The Final Supper, bought for $23.3 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in 2013, setting the public sale document for up to date Asian artwork on the time. The explanation they gave: to purchase extra artwork.
“Our job as collectors is to advertise younger artists,” Ullens informed the Journal. “I would like my artwork to present me goose bumps. Once I get them, I do know it’s one thing good.”
Man François Edouard Marie Ullens de Schooten Whettnall was born on January 31, 1935, in San Francisco to Baron Jean Ullens and Baroness Marie Thérèse Ullens, who served as diplomats within the US on the time. Each got here from noble Belgian households. The Ullens household was ennobled in 1693 by Charles II of Spain, when Belgium was below Spanish rule, according to Politico.
After incomes a legislation diploma and an MBA from Stanford College, Man Ullens joined his household enterprise Raffinerie Tirlemontoise, which targeted on beet sugar refinery. He was instrumental within the firm’s operations increasing to Asia within the Eighties. In 1989, it bought to a German firm.
Shortly afterward, within the early ’90s, Ullens met Myriam when she was in search of buyers to increase her pastry enterprise. One potential investor was Ullens. She recalled experiencing a “coup de foudre,” telling Madame Figaro in 2014, “He’s my Pygmalion, the person whom I like and who made me get away of my shell.”
On the time, Man was married with 4 kids, and Myriam had two kids of her personal. Man divorced his first spouse, and he and Myriam married in 1999. Round this time, Artal, one other Ullens-owned firm, acquired Weight Watchers for $735 million. Man would in the end retire from the enterprise in 2000, primarily to deal with his accumulating and philanthropy. By this level, Myriam had already bought her pastry enterprise, later launching a luxurious vogue model, Masion Ullens, in 2009.
By 2007, forward of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, they’d open the UCCA. The establishment’s first exhibition, “’85 New Wave: The Delivery of Chinese language Up to date Artwork,” helped set up a canon for artwork from this era and relied totally on the Ullenss holdings.
In 2023, Myriam was murdered outdoors the couple’s dwelling close to Brussels. Her stepson Nicolas Ullens introduced himself to the Belgian authorities and confessed to the killing, according to the New York Instances. Myriam was discovered lifeless in a Volkswagen, with Man subsequent to her, his legs wounded. Nicolas reportedly fired six photographs on the two. A month later, Man filed a civil swimsuit towards his son. Nicolas has denied that the homicide was premeditated.
The reason for the slaying was extensively reported within the Belgian press to need to do with an inheritance dispute. Nicolas was launched below home arrest after spending six months in jail, in keeping with Politico; he’s nonetheless awaiting a trial that’s estimated to start out in 2026.
In reflecting on his accumulating practices specializing in Chinese language up to date artists, in a 2018 interview with the Asian Artwork Newspaper, Man stated, “We have been those who occurred to assist them and we began to amass work. We have been pushed by sheer enthusiasm!”
