First thing not to speak of the subject

It is a virus, the desire to possess. It is sick. "Georges Helft is the accounting of its collections with a delicacy not feigned. "I has 286 handwritten pages of Borges." I have 13 works of Klee, Feininger, Kandinsky, Picasso. My collection contains 1,250 works of the 20th century including 900 Argentinian designed after 1960, when the country is his artistic path. "I have a dozen works of Duchamp, 3 works of Joseph Cornell, the full set of prints of Dürer on the Apocalypse", and again and again... Georges Helft has sixty and eleven years. He states that he will live up to one hundred years and takes its time to look to the future of its collections. He tells he exposes his property in four places in Buenos Aires and gives free access to researchers interested in Jorge Luis Borges (1) documents.

After this surging figures, human, installed in an armchair in his Parisian apartment, softly, tells with a chosen French, his quest for discoveries. Contrast these connected collectors crisscrossing the world of contemporary art today (read above), he wants to buy out the modes and always cheap.

Its history begins in Paris. His father, Jacques Helft, is an expert in French silversmith, and his uncle, Léonce Rosenberg, is one of the merchants of Picasso. In 1940, the family exiled in the United States and then, in 1947, Argentina. Georges, who will become Jorge in his adopted country, finally settled in Buenos Aires. He worked first in the textile industry, became trader in grain before retiring at the age of forty-eight. The time has come, according to him, to devote himself entirely to his artistic passions. Appetite is not new. He says for example in detail his first purchase of a work of Klee: "at this time, I was 32 years old and I bought in Argentina of the parts that were worth only $ 300.". I came to Paris. My father had to friend dealer Heinz Berggruen (2). It had organized an exhibition of Paul Klee that I went. He has tried to test me: "your father told me that you had a look." "What works you prefer" Finally, suggested me that I wanted for a low price. It is a "prospect" of 1924 which had belonged to Jean Paulhan. We have become friends. Paul Klee is my favourite artist. I hooked eight Klee in my bedroom. I look at them every day.

How plays on this painting abstract to the manuscripts of Borges "Among all the people I have known, that this is Dali, shines, Pierre Boulez, Louise Bourgeois, or Picasso, Jorge Luis Borges is the one I was most impressed." He was extremely modest, shy, but a great scholarship and he was very generous. He died in 1986 and, when I am interested to the owners of his manuscripts, I noticed that the national library which he had been Director did nothing, and the University where he taught for twenty-two years. Nothing, nowhere. Need to maintain the memory of his work. It was a huge challenge.

He has therefore accumulated over twenty books and manuscripts originals of the great Argentine writer. The day where... "It has become absurd from 1992-1993" In the last auction of manuscripts, Borges paper sells more expensive than another of Napoleon. I can no longer follow.

In the field of the avant-garde, Georges Helft soon turned on "the case" Duchamp. "It was about twenty-five years ago." I first purchased by auction the "box-in-bag" (3) which had belonged to Andy Warhol. Today, it is acknowledged that he made with Matisse and Picasso of the greatest three artists of the 20th century but it was not the case at this time. He has influenced all the artistic production of the second part of the 20th century, the pop, the conceptual, artists of minimalism. "He also spoke with admiration of a conceptual Argentine artist, Leopoldo Maler, unknown to the general public. "His masterpiece is a typewriter which the roller has been replaced by a gas burner." A large flame out instead of paper. This piece was a tribute to his uncle died in urban guerrilla. He was Director of a liberal newspaper that advocated non-violence. I will explain in my dining room. There is no Koons or Hirst work approaches the strength of that one.

He remembers the visits of the Frick Collection in New York with his father: "was going to be looking at a table, a Bellini for example." First thing: not to speak of the subject. It addressed topics such as "why is this art" or even the composition, the pictorial matter, harmony and, finally, considering the subject of the composition. "And added:"my father has left six or seven collections of goldsmiths, one of the largest in the world, including the collection David David-Weill today in part to the Louvre."

The collections of Georges Helft, they bear the name of that which was designed. They are the fruit of this obsession of possession.