Charles Saatchi

Charles Saatchi ( born June 9, 1943 in Baghdad, Iraq ) is a British art dealer.

Life

Saatchi comes from an Iraqi- Jewish family who emigrated to Britain in 1947. After his studies he founded in 1970 with his brother Maurice Saatchi, the international advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. Both left in 1995 and founded their agency M & C Saatchi. Also, this network operates worldwide. In the fall of 2006, Charles Saatchi has sold its last shares in M & C Saatchi.

Charles Saatchi is partly responsible for the rise of the Young British Artists, and founder of the Saatchi Gallery. Among the best known works of his collection belonged until 2004, the six -meter-long " The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living", a conserved in formaldehyde solution tiger shark by the British artist Damien Hirst, which he said hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen for 6.5 million pounds ( 9.3 million euros ) sold. Thus Saatchi not only made 9.225 million euro profit, but also to Hirst - at that time - the second most expensive living artist after Jasper Johns.

If he likes the works of an artist, then he buys many of his works and the public. He says: "I buy art that I like. I buy them, to show them in exhibitions. Then, if I like it, I sell it and buy more art. "

On the night of May 24, 2004, he lost in a fire in a London warehouse more than 140 works from his collection.

Charles Saatchi was married in first marriage with the American Doris Lockhart. His marriage in 2003 with the TV chef Nigella Lawson ended after a documented by a paparazzo incident of spousal abuse in 2013 in a bitter divorce battle.