Léopold Zborowski

Leopold Zborowski (* 1889 in Warsaw, † 1932 in Paris) was a Polish art dealer and poet.

Life

Together with his partner Anna (or Hanka ) and later wife came Leopold Zborowski 1910 to France, where he found employment as an art dealer at the Académie des Beaux -Arts. He often frequented the Café de la Rotonde, the meeting place of the Cubists, in Montparnasse in Paris.

In the following years he acquired paintings, among others, Marc Chagall, Alexej von Jawlensky, Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne, André Derain, Aristide Maillol, René Iché, Maurice de Vlaminck, Georges Rouault, Maurice Utrillo and Auguste Rodin.

In 1916, asked the painter Moise Kisling his friend and neighbor Amedeo Modigliani the Künsthändler Zborowski ago, and took him under contract. In the following years Modigliani painted 35 pictures for him. To escape the German bombs, the couple moved Zborowski with the emigrant Lunia Czechowska whose husband was at the front and she had given into the care of a childhood friend, Nice and Cagnes -sur -Mer. Czechowska was an important model for Modigliani. Their relationship was platonic, which is worth mentioning because the Italian Beau had many affairs. After the death of his protégé (1920 to tuberculous meningitis) Leopold Zborowski bought all the paintings, sculptures and sketches and became wealthy. On the advice of Zborowski, the painter Chaim Soutine held in the years 1919 to 1922 in Pyrenäenort Ceret, where he created a unique in the art of the 20th century landscape series.

In the late 1920s Leopold Zborowski had an affair with his secretary Paulette Jourdain and separated from his wife. Zborowski died in 1932 penniless in Paris and was buried there in a pauper's grave.

Others

From Leopold Zborowski exist only three portraits of Amadeo Modigliani, as well as a portrait of Jean Fautrier (1928 ). 2003 bought a portrait for $ 1,464,000 at Sotheby's auction house in London by an unknown buyer.