How Klaus Hegewisch built one of the finest collections of prints and drawings in the world

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.

Hegewisch was born in Hamburg in 1919. His mother and father separated when he was a child, and money was tight. Young Klaus joined the city’s oldest sailing club, sparking a love of the sea that would last his whole life.

Drafted into the German navy at the start of the Second World War, he was soon promoted, and ultimately served as commander on patrol boats and minesweepers. As the conflict progressed, however, Hegewisch grew vocal in his doubts about the Nazi government — especially after bombing raids on Hamburg in 1943 left the city in ruins, and many of his friends and family bombed out or dead. He was interrogated more than once.

Even after the war had ended, Hegewisch’s minesweeper continued its task of clearing shipping routes in Scandinavia. When it hit a mine and sank, he was one of only four crew members to survive.

Things picked up for him in peacetime. The import business was thriving, and he and Helga had six children, built a modernist bungalow for themselves on the River Elbe, and befriended a host of figures who would influence the cultural and intellectual life of West Germany in the decades to come. (These included the literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki; the founder of Der Spiegel news magazine, Rudolf Augstein; and the art theorist and Fluxus group member Bazon Brock.)

In his early years as a collector, Hegewisch called upon friends for advice, such as the graphic artist Horst Janssen. Over time, he came to rely increasingly on his own judgement, taste and eye, but always enjoyed the exchange of ideas and knowledge, especially with his friends Werner Hofmann, then director of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, and the theatre director and cultural critic Ivan Nagel at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus.

Highlight acquisitions included Matisse’s drawing of a richly dressed woman reclining on a chaise longue, Odalisque (Femme étendue). She is draped in ornately patterned diaphanous robes that seem to flow across her body.

Among other purchases was a complete set of etchings from the first edition of Goya’s final prints series, Los Proverbios (also known as ‘Los Disparates’); and Dürer’s engraving Saint Jerome in his Study, where the subject sits at his desk accompanied by a lion and a sleeping dog, his halo shining more brightly than the sunlight pouring into the room.

Hegewisch was interested in the dreams, fantasies and fears that drive and torment us — and his art collection reflected that. Its images teem with mythical creatures: from Odilon Redon’s winged horses and William Blake’s sea monsters, to Picasso’s minotaurs and Ensor’s grinning skeletons — not to mention the scenes from six Brothers Grimm fairy tales, which David Hockney illustrated in a series of etchings. These artists were following a long tradition of print series exploring the supernatural and uncanny, which also included works by Piranesi, John Martin and Max Klinger.

According to his children, collecting art was a way in which Hegewisch dealt with the trauma of his — and his country’s — wartime past: through artists who explored the depths and far reaches of the human soul.

Like many Germans of his generation, the man himself rarely spoke of his wartime experiences. He did say, though, that the spellbinding aspect of his collection only gradually became apparent to him, as opposed to having been planned.

Hegewisch’s business did well right through until his retirement in 1986. By then, he and Helga had divorced, and he was married to his second wife, Erika, an artist.

Like his personal life, Hegewisch’s art collection also underwent changes over the years. Initially, it had included a number of paintings — most notably Beckmann’s Carnival (today owned by the Tate) and The Poet Iwar von Lücken by Otto Dix (now in the Berlinische Galerie), a preparatory drawing for which he had also acquired. From the 1980s onwards, however, Hegewisch, who had always felt drawn to the graphic arts, concentrated on works on paper and prints, with a few sculptures and West African works of art as exceptions to the rule.

At first, his interest lay in art of the early 20th century. This later expanded to the 19th century and, finally, the Old Masters. The end result was one of the world’s most distinguished private collections of prints and drawings.

In many instances, Hegewisch did not acquire works in isolation, but rather in view of their place within his broader collection.

There’s an obvious affinity, for example, between Rembrandt’s print The Artist drawing from the Model and Picasso’s drawing Sculpteur avec buste de jeune fille sur une sellette.

The former, beguilingly incomplete, shows its subject seated in his studio, drawing from a live model who stands with her back to the viewer. Picasso’s work, as per its title, shows a sculptor in the process of producing the bust of a girl, which rests on a pedestal.

Picasso drew it on the frontispiece of the exhibition catalogue for his first large-scale retrospective, held at Galerie Georges Petit in Paris in 1932: a landmark show which cemented his reputation as the premier artist of the European avant-garde. He utilised a fluid, economical line to construct his subjects and grant them a sense of affecting immediacy.

Hegewisch was a collector who loved to show his collection, both in public and at home. On bright days, the curtains in his apartment were drawn shut to protect the many graphic works hanging on the walls from daylight. ‘Since I got together with my husband, my life has become much more shadowy,’ Erika quipped.

Works were also regularly lent to exhibitions worldwide, and in 1997 a dedicated space called the Hegewisch-Kabinett was established at the Hamburger Kunsthalle. For the following two decades, this housed rotating exhibitions drawn from the collector’s holdings.

No look at Hegewisch’s life is complete without a brief mention of his exploits as a sailor. He crossed the Atlantic on more than one occasion, most memorably in 1955 when skippering a German vessel in the first transatlantic yacht race after the war. He sailed boats, just as he collected art, into his old age.

Hegewisch passed away in 2014, age 94. He left behind an art collection that is frequently enchanting, occasionally disquieting, and all but guaranteed to leave a viewer spellbound.

Spellbound: The Hegewisch Collection Part II will be on view from 25 February to 7 March 2026 at Christie’s in London

Christie’s 20th/21st Century Art auctions take place in London and online, from 25 February to 19 March 2026. Explore the global tour, preview exhibition and sales