Guy Ullens, a Belgian billionaire who built up one of the most important collections of Chinese contemporary art in the world, has died at 90. The news was announced on social media by the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, which Ullens had cofounded. The museum did not provide a cause.
“As one of the earliest international collectors to champion Chinese artists, Ullens helped bring global recognition to Chinese artists and their work,” the UCCA said on Instagram. “His dedicated efforts also shaped the foundation for UCCA’s growth into the institution we are today, in China and globally. … We remember him with deep respect and gratitude. His legacy endures—in the institutions he founded, the artists he championed, and in the communities he helped build—and will continue to shape and inspire UCCA’s work and mission.”
With his late wife Myriam, Ullens would go on to buy important works by Liu Xiaodong, Liu Wei, Zeng Fanzhi, Huang Yong Ping, Wang Keping, and more, often for relatively low prices. His collection would eventually comprise between 1,500 and 2,000 works, with much of it stored in Geneva. The couple ranked on the Artnews Top 200 Collectors list each year between 2008 and 2015.
In 2007, the couple established the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing’s 798 Art Zone as a private museum for their collection. The institution can be partially credited with setting off a wave of private museums that sprung up in China in the decade that followed.
The Ullenses sought a buyer for their museum in 2016, selling it to Chinese investors in 2017. The institution was then renamed the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art.
In addition to supporting artists, Ullens also helped establish a secondary market for Chinese contemporary art, selling works from the collection over the years, including in 2017, when when he and his wife auctioned off 50 works. One such consignment, Zeng’s The Last Supper for $23.3 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in 2013, setting the auction record for contemporary Asian art at the time. The reason they gave: to buy more art.
“Our job as collectors is to promote young artists,” Ullens told the the Press. “I want my art to give me goose bumps. When I get them, I know it’s something good.”
His importance for promoting Chinese contemporary art will be well remembered.