It wasn’t the most likely route into art collecting, but it was certainly effective. In 1950, Klaus Hegewisch was a partner in a fruit and vegetable import business. He married his fiancée Helga that year, the daughter of a successful shipper who transported fruit from Latin America to Hamburg.
The two men joined forces commercially, and Helga was tasked with giving the company’s cargo ships a fresher look — boasting as they did a number of additional cabins for passengers. The couple began visiting Hamburg’s art academy, the Landeskunstschule, where they befriended teachers and students, and purchased pictures for display on board.
‘My interest in art was thus awakened,’ said Hegewisch later in life, by which point he had put together a stunning collection of prints and drawings. Spanning several centuries, it features some of the most important graphic works by the likes of Dürer, Goya, Ensor, Feininger and Munch, as well as the collector’s modern compatriots Max Beckmann and Otto Dix.
The collection’s central figure is Picasso, who is represented by — among other pieces — Cheval et taureau, a remarkable pen-and-ink drawing of a bull thrusting one of its horns deep into the body of a horse, whose death throes are rendered as an ecstasy of pain. Executed in 1934, it anticipates in many aspects the artist’s famous anti-war painting Guernica from three years later.
Hegewisch’s collection is being offered at Christie’s across three sales with the collective title ‘Spellbound’. The first took place in October 2025; the second will be held on 7 March 2026 at Christie’s in London; and the third sale is scheduled for September.
The title works on two levels. For one, it connotes that Hegewisch was enthralled by the art he collected. Second, it reflects the content of the imagery he was attracted to. ‘The mysterious and the dreamlike… interest me much more than unambiguous realism,’ he said. More on which below.
