Helga and Edzard Reuter: ‘They were pioneers in collecting new styles of art’

In a quiet suburb on the fringes of Stuttgart lies a 1970s Brutalist villa that contains one of Germany’s most significant collections of 20th-century art.

Inside, minimalist and abstract paintings by Yves Klein, Lucio Fontana, Enrico Castellani, Jesús Rafael Soto, Piero Manzoni, Günther Uecker, Jean Tinguely, Heinz Mack and many more jostle for every inch of space on the building’s exposed-concrete walls. Known as a ‘Petersburg hang’ — alluding to the Hermitage in St Petersburg, where the vast picture collection occupied the entirety of the palace’s wall space — this layout, without order or preference, reflects the egalitarian way in which these artists approached their subject. It also illustrates the collecting zeal of the home’s owners, Helga and Edzard Reuter.

On 28 May 2025, Christie’s in Paris is offering 49 works from the couple’s legendary collection, with proceeds from the sale benefitting the foundation they established 30 years ago.

‘In the aftermath of the Second World War, a revolution happened in Europe, with artists in several countries, including Germany, Italy and France, simultaneously pushing the boundaries of form and process,’ explains Paul Nyzam, head of Christie’s Post-War and Contemporary Art department in Paris. ‘Edzard was a visionary entrepreneur, working at the forefront of technology, but he and his wife were also pioneers in collecting these new styles of art that looked to a utopian future.’

A radical tycoon: Edzard Reuter at Daimler-Benz

Edzard Reuter was born in Berlin on 16 February 1928. His father, Ernst Reuter, was a social democratic politician. After the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933, the family spent more than a decade exiled in Ankara, Turkey, returning to Germany after the war. In 1948, Ernst became the mayor of a divided Berlin — a position he held until his death in 1953.

Between 1946 and 1949, Edzard attended university in Berlin and Göttingen, studying mathematics, physics and law. After various executive posts at Universum Film AG and the Bertelsmann group, in 1964 he joined Daimler-Benz AG, the German automotive giant that was formed in 1926 with the merger of the world’s oldest car company, Benz & Cie., and Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft.

By the mid-1980s, Reuter was a titan of industry, becoming CEO and chairman of Daimler-Benz. Alongside transforming the business into an integrated technology group, he reimagined the company’s corporate art collection, acquiring works by visionaries such as Robert Rauschenberg and Walter De Maria.

His real stroke of genius, however, came in 1986, when he persuaded Andy Warhol to create a series of paintings commemorating the centenary of Carl Benz’s patent for the earliest motor car. It was to be the first time the Pop artist had depicted an object not designed in America.

Warhol, who famously owned a 1974 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow yet never learned to drive, planned to depict 20 of Mercedes’s most recognisable models across 80 works. But by the time of his death the following year, he had completed just 36 silkscreens and 13 drawings, covering eight cars. Today, all the works remain in the Mercedes art collection.

Reuter’s approach to corporate collecting was novel. Yet it was at home that he and Helga could give full expression to their passion for contemporary art.

A sense of modernity: the Zero group and beyond

Helga and Edzard began collecting in the 1960s, acquiring pieces through a network of European galleries, as well as directly from the studios of the artists they became close to. Their aim was to amass works by all the key avant-garde artists of the post-war decades in Europe.

The core of their collection focuses on the short-lived but influential German Zero group — a collective of artists active in Düsseldorf between 1957 and 1966, who experimented with the properties of light, space and motion — and traces its impact across Europe.

Heinz Mack was one of Zero’s founders. His biggest contribution to the movement was the Dynamische Struktur series, which involved raking layers of resin or oil paint across the surface of a canvas to create oscillating, rhythmic patterns.

Zero’s other key figure was Otto Piene. His hypnotic Rasterbild (‘grid picture’) and Rauchbild (‘smoke picture’) series explored new spatial possibilities, with the artist employing immense perforated screens to produce paintings with tactile surfaces of raised dots, or passing a flame over the canvas to leave trails of soot.

In 1961, the duo were joined by Günther Uecker, whose practice at the time involved hammering hundreds of nails into his canvases in order to ‘disturb and irritate geometric order’ through a mix of shapes and shadows.

The trio chose the name ‘Zero’ in reference to the moment a rocket blasts off. Fittingly, their influence exploded across the continent.

One of the group’s earliest international allies was Yves Klein. In 1957, the French artist travelled to Düsseldorf to show 11 of his latest monochrome canvases at Galerie Schmela, Zero’s de facto headquarters.

Inspired by the group’s vision, he began to create topographical paintings using plaster on panel in his new, patented colour: International Klein Blue. In October 1960, along with nine other artists including Arman and Daniel Spoerri, and the cultural critic Pierre Restany, he established a French splinter movement: Nouveau Réalisme. (Two years later, Klein married the artist Rotraut Uecker, Günther Uecker’s sister.)

Another visitor to Galerie Schmela in 1957 was Piero Manzoni. Seeing Klein’s work was a revelatory experience for the Italian, who abandoned his pursuit of Art Informel and began work on a series of ‘colourless’ canvases, called Achromes, in direct response to the exhibition. Not long after, Manzoni, along with fellow artist Enrico Castellani, founded the Azimut gallery and the journal Azimuth as the Italian arm of Zero.

Manzoni presented his Achromes in the group show Zero, which opened in Rotterdam in 1959. The exhibition also included work by Jan Schoonhoven, who along with Armando, Jan Henderikse, Herman de Vries and Henk Peeters had founded the Dutch equivalent of Zero, group Nul, in 1958.

Working in the Netherlands, these artists took their cues from Uecker and Piene, incinerating canvases and making art from nails hammered into wooden panels. In 1961, they published the first edition of their journal Revue nul = 0, in which they exalted Zero’s impact on the contemporary landscape.

Another Italian, Lucio Fontana, also forged close ties with Zero. In 1958, he slashed his first canvas with a blade — an action that chimed with the Germans’ conceptual approach. Being a generation older, however, Fontana became their spiritual mentor.

In 1964, Piene, Uecker and Mack presented Lichtraum (Hommage à Fontana) at Documenta 3 in Basel. The installation included seven of their own works alongside a projected photo of a Fontana painting — in protest at the organisers’ decision not to invite him to participate.

As well as making waves across France, Italy and the Netherlands, Zero’s work also influenced Jean Tinguely in Switzerland, Pol Bury in Belgium, and even the radical painters of the Gutai group in Japan.

The Helga and Edzard Reuter Foundation

Edzard Reuter died on 27 October 2024 at the age of 96. Three weeks later, Helga passed away aged 87. They had been married for 52 years. They bequeathed their entire collection to their charitable foundation.

‘The house that Helga and Edzard spent many years in was both intimate and spectacular — a true temple to modern art,’ says Nyzam.

‘Their collection brilliantly captures the dynamic spirit of the European art scene during the post-war years. Many of these carefully selected works are from particularly poignant times in the early careers of some of the 20th century’s most influential artists — and they haven’t been seen by the public in decades.’

For the couple, however, art was much more than a mere aesthetic pleasure — it was a vehicle for the transmission of knowledge and ideas. ‘You can only perceive art if you reflect on its subject,’ Edzard said in 2013.

The couple established the Helga and Edzard Reuter Foundation in Berlin in 1995. Having been deeply affected by his experience of living in exile, and inspired by his father’s humanist ideals, Edzard made it the foundation’s mission to promote the power of dialogue to transcend ethnic, cultural and religious differences — with a pioneering spirit that is mirrored by the artists he and Helga collected.

Collection Helga et Edzard Reuter will be on view at Christie’s in Paris from 24 May 2025, ahead of the sale on 28 May

Related artists: Arman