GnosyArt Ltd

“Yesterday evening we all went in search of our singular goal: the paintings of Van Gogh,” wrote Helene in her diary. Vincent van Gogh was the painter she was searching for… In Bremmer’s eyes European painting was one long struggle to loosen itself from the shackles of realism and achieve pure and exalted feeling. He believed Van Gogh’s work to represent the most advanced stage of this evolution. Helene herself believed the value of his work to lay elsewhere ‘His value lies not in his means of expression, his technique, but in his great and new humanity. He created modern Expressionism’.

One day in Paris resulted in the purchase of seven van Goghs and the next day she became the proud owner of a Signac and a Seurat. One month later she owned 15 more van Goghs and by the end of the year she had bought another 13. When Helene died at the age of 70 in 1939 her collection consisted of 97 paintings and 185 drawings of the Dutch master. Until now the ‘Van Gogh’ collection of the Kröller-Müller museum is the second largest in the world; the collection of the Van Gogh museum remains the largest in the world.

However her passion for art was not limited to van Goghs works only, Helene aimed to gather an impressive art collection with a vision, like the Medici’s had done before. It was on a trip to Florence in June 1910 that she conceived the idea of creating a museum-house. “Then, in a hundred years’ time, it will be…proof of the extent to which a merchant family at the turn of the century could achieve intrinsic refinement,” she wrote. Her collection would cover the development of modern art: ‘Part of the intention of forming this collection was to show - to prove- that abstract art is not something insurmountable but that it has always existed. That is why you find new and older works here side by side. I meant to use the old to support the right of the new to exist.’ She wished to collect more and more art, a wish that for many years could be sponsored by her husband unconditionally; upon her dead she had donated to the Dutch state a collection of over 11,000 thousand pieces, including work of Lucas Cranach, James Ensor, Odilon Redon, George Seurat, Paul Signac, Paul Gauguin, Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondriaan.

How did a lady at the early years of the twentieth century, when Europe was involved in a world war, get the opportunity to become such a remarkable collector of art? Helene was born in Germany, in a small town near Essen as the daughter Wilhelm Müller. He was involved in the sale of mining and blast furnace products and started his own company, Wm. H. Müller & Co. Two years later he opened a branch in Rotterdam, managed by Willem Kröller. It was in around 1882 when Anton Kröller, the youngest brother of Willem Kröller, first became acquainted with the Müller family. He stayed with them while learning the ropes at Wm. H. Müller & Co. In 1887, 18-year-old Helene and Anton Kröller met once again in her father’s office. They fell in love and one year later they were married.

In 1889 Anton Kröller became the head of the firm and under his leadership the company grew into a powerful international concern with major interests in shipping, the American grain trade and ore mining in North Africa and Spain. As a lady of wealth living in a neutral country Helene could spend her time peacefully, enjoying her passions. Her intense (but no evidence for romantic) contact with Hendricus Bremmer, a mediocrate painter and self acclaimed art critic, that taught her and her daughters private art lessons at home, conceived the initial dreams of forming an art collection. The discovery of a serious illness in 1911, pulled the trigger for Helene. Her life’s mission was to immortalize herself and her family with a legacy of what she believed to be the most significant modern art that existed.

Art Enjoyment, in the traditional sense of visual pleasure, played in Kröller-Müller’s passion for collecting almost no role, nor the acquisition of social prestige by the display of a progressive flavor. She had almost no contact with the contemporary art world, art associations, museums or other collectors. In the only personal publication devoted to her collection, she acknowledged that not all artwork that she possessed was esthetic or attractive. Kröller-Müller was convinced that the initiation into modern art is a process of purification, concentration on the essential, almost to the level of asceticism. She wanted others to experience the same process that she had undergone. This wish for others to follow after her allowed her feverish - and even then relatively expensive - purchases to be justified as a form of sacrifice.

In 1929 the crash of the Wall Street stock exchange, severely impacted the business of the Kröller family and suddenly the collection that Helene had composed was in serious danger. After forced sales of some of their offices the couple decided to approach the Dutch state to find a solution to safeguard the artwork. Their art collection and the many hectares of real estate in the centre of the country were finally handed over to the Dutch state in 1935, who build a museum in the middle of the green of the national park to house Helene’s impressive collection of art.

Today the legacy of Helene is well preserved in the Kröller-Müller museum, located in the heart of Holland in a National Park, near the town of Otterloo. Besides the display of the result of Helene’s obsessive quest for modern art, the museum is surrounded by one of the largest sculpture gardens in Europe. Visitors are delighted by the display of works by Marta Pan, Hepworth, Rodin, Bourdelle, Lipchitz, Marini, Paolozzi, Moore and many others. Nowadays the Kröller-Müller Museum and the Hoge Veluwe National Park form a monumental ensemble of art, architecture and nature.

For more information about the museum please visit: http://www.kmm.nl/