Why Collect Art?

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Elena entre Roses Sorolla y Bastida (PD-US)

I was once again reading through my copy of the catalog for the 1989 exhibition, The Painter Joaquin Sorolla, and came across this 1933 quote by John Paul Getty in an article called Creative Collecting. Ever the opportunist, Getty had decided that since the Crash in 1929, the time was ripe for collecting great art for investment purposes on the cheap, and he set about hitting the auctions. By that time, avant-garde art was on the rise and Sorolla’s work was out of fashion and not on Getty’s collecting radar. In a testimonial which, in our view, defines why some art is so powerful that its transcendent expression can speak to the soul of even the most tough-minded of business men, Mr. Getty explained why he bought the 10 Sorollas:

“In November 1933 I attended the Thomas Fortune Ryan sale at the Anderson Galleries in New York City. There I purchased a total of twelve pieces. Ten of them were paintings by the Spani…