Struggle for late baron's art collection

By RICHARD DALE

One of the most spectacular international exhibitions of paintings this country has seen was America and Europe: A Century of Modern Masters, which toured in 1980. On loan from the collection of Swiss industrialist, art lover and jet-setter Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen Bornemisza de Kaszon, it contained nearly 100 paintings of breathtaking range and quality.

Just look at the names: Braque, Picasso, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Monet, Klee, De Koonig, Hopper, O'Keefe, Pollock, Rothko, Freud, Wyeth, Bacon, Hockney ... It was an exhibition that Thought Big and was sponsored, appropriately enough, by that past master of Think Big projects, Prime Minister Robert Muldoon.

In another case of art oiling capital, the idea was that we would see the good baron's artworks, and then lure him to build Muldoon's grand vision: heavy industry in Aotearoa, New Zealand as the Ruhr of the Pacific. As it turned out, we didn't like Think Big, Muldoon is no longer with us, and now neither is the baron, who recently died at 81, closing a chapter in our art history.

And what happened to all those paintings, described as the world's most significant private collection of modern art? According to the Guardian obituary, several countries vied intensively to house it, with Britain sending Prince Charles and Margaret Thatcher to Switzerland to try to obtain it. The bedroom, however, won the day. Apparently the baron's widow and fifth wife, Carmen Tita Cervera, a former beauty queen and widow of a former Tarzan actor, clinched the deal for her native country, Spain.

You can visit the collection at its permanent home in the Villahermosa Palace, near the Prado in Madrid. But will we ever see the like here again?