User:Eli185/Salomon B. Slijper

Salomon B. Slijper (Salomon Bernard "Sal" Slijper; * 20 January 1884 in Amsterdam; † 9 August 1971 in Laren) was a Dutch estate agent and art collector who became particularly well known for his purchases of works by Piet Mondrian. In his will, he bequeathed his entire collection to the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, which is now home to the world's largest Mondrian collection.

Early years
Slijper was born into a Dutch-Jewish family, the son of the diamond broker Bernard Ezechiël Slijper (1843-1903) and his wife Elisabeth Benedictus (1851-1888). After the death of his mother, the maid Mathilda Cohen (1869-1943) took over the upbringing of the 4-year-old and married Salomon's father on 28 February 1889. After six years of Dutch primary school, Salomon Slijper went to the Hoogere Burgerschool (higher bourgeois school, HBS, a type of grammar school) for three years and then to the Openbare Handelsschool (public trade school) in Amsterdam for three years, and from 1900 worked at the Amsterdamsche Bank for six years. When his father died in 1903, he left the 19-year-old an inheritance that made him financially independent. From 1908 to 1912, he initially worked for the estate agent J. H. de Roode and then set up his own business as an estate agent in Amsterdam.

Piet Mondrian
In September 1916, Slijper met Piet Mondrian in Laren, an artists' village whose painters were known as the Laren School group. They met at the De Linden boarding house run by Catharina Hannaert (1868-1946); Hannaert was an admirer of Mondrian. In October 1917, Slijper moved to Blaricum, where his stepmother lived. Mondrian visited him there quite often, especially on Sundays, when many young people would gather at Slijper's house and Mondrian would occasionally dance with a pretty girl, have lunch and bring back a drawing or sketch as thanks for the hospitality. Shortly before Mondrian's departure from Laren in June 1919, Slijper, who retained a lifelong fondness for Piet Mondrian's figurative period, bought three so-called chequerboard compositions from 1919 from the artist. He also bought the pre-war paintings that Mondrian had left behind in The Hague when he left for Paris. After Mondrian returned to Paris in 1919 and found his studio as he had left it, he sent all the available naturalist and cubist paintings as well as two oval works to Sal Slijper, who paid a total of 965 guilders for theme.

At Sal Slijper's suggestion, Mondrian repeatedly created flower drawings between 1922 and 1925, each with a single flower, which pleased visitors to his studio so much that he was able to sell further copies for 100 francs each. In 1922, to celebrate Piet Mondrian's 50th birthday, Slijper organised a retrospective exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam together with the painter Peter Alma, the architect Bob Oud and H. J. Wolter, a former fellow student of Mondrian. Many of the works exhibited at the time came from the extensive Slijper collection. In March 1922, Slijper, Peter Alma, the Stieltjes family and Willem Steenhoff decided to support Piet Mondrian financially by paying him a quarter of the rent for his studio for two years, in return for which they would each receive a painting from the artist every year. These paintings were to be donated to a public collection. On behalf of this group of four, Slijper presented the painting Mill in the Evening from 1917 to the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam on 20 May 1923.

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German occupation of the Netherlands
During the Second World War, 80 percent of Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Slijper was one of the few who survived, with the help of his housekeeper Johanna Hamdorff (1886-1976). Sal Slijper and Johanna Hamsdorff married in 1947. Slijper's Mondrian collection survived the war unscathed, wrapped in newspaper and stacked under some old carpets in the attic of the neighbouring Kuier family. .

From October 1945, Slijper helped to organise a Mondrian memorial exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which took place a year later and was also shown at the Kunsthalle Basel. He came into contact with other collectors and gallery owners such as Sidney Janis and Peggy Guggenheim and continued to trade and collect strategically, including from auctions.

Exhbitions
In 2010, the exhibition Gedurfd Verzamelen (Daring Collecting) was shown at the Joods Historisch Museum in Amsterdam, which was dedicated to the three art collectors Andries van Wezel (1856-1921), Willem Wolff Beffie (1880-1950) and Sal Slijper. On the occasion of the exhibition, a 33-minute television documentary produced by the Joodse Omroep (Jewish Radio) was broadcast on 14 March 2010 on Dutch television station Nederland 2, focusing on Sal Slijper's collecting activities.

Literature

 * Mandy Prins: Salomon B. Slijper (1884–1971), vriend, verzamelaar en mecenas van Piet Mondriaan. In: Huibert Schijf & Edward van Voolen (Hrsg.): Gedurfd verzamelen. Van Chagall tot Mondriaan. Waanders, Zwolle 2010, ISBN 9789040076626, S. 144–165 (Auszug als PDF; 14,3 MB)
 * Pien van der Werf: Het archief van Sal Slijper. In: RKD Bulletin. Nr. 2, 1996, S. 12–16

Weblinks

 * Salomon B. Slijper (1884–1971) auf kubisme.info, 14. August 2012 (niederländisch)
 * Porträt von Sal Slijper aus dem Jahr 1930, gemalt von Henri van de Velde (1896–1969)
 * Archief Sal Slijper in archievenWO2.nl
 * Inventaris van het archief van Sal Slijper (1884–1971) (PDF; 504 kB) von Pien van der Werf, Marcia Zaaijer, Lidy Visser & Wietse Coppes, Website des Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), 1996–2011