Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, 1956, by Chargesheimer ()
Born	(1884-06-25)25 June 1884 Mannheim, Baden, Germany
Died	11 January 1979(1979-01-11) (aged 94) Paris, France
Occupation	Art dealer, historian
Religion	Judaism

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler (25 June 1884 – 11 January 1979) was a German-born art historian, art collector, and one of the premier French art dealers of the 20th century. He became prominent as an art gallery owner in Paris beginning in 1907 and he was among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Cubism.

Kahnweiler's family had moved from Rockenhausen, a small village in the Palatinate, to Mannheim, Baden, where Kahnweiler was born in 1884. His upbringing and education at a German Gymnasium prepared him for a life as a philosophic art connoisseur and as a pragmatic businessman. An early initial training in the family business of in Germany and Paris (his uncle had a famous London stock brokerage house and was a major art collector of traditional English works and furniture) gave way to his opening his first small (4 by 4 metres or 13 by 13 feet) art gallery in Paris in 1907 at 28 rue Vignon.

Kahnweiler is considered one of the major dealers and spokesmen for Cubism. He was among the first people to recognize the importance and beauty of Picasso's Les Demoiselles D'Avignon, immediately wanting to buy it and all of Picasso's works. Picasso wrote of Kahnweiler What would have become of us if Kahnweiler hadn't had a business sense? – compelling because at the time of the origination of his most famous works Picasso was largely unknown as an artist and destitute.

Kahnweiler supported in his gallery all of his great artists of the time; who had no audience, or collectors – initial purchases included works by Kees van Dongen, André Derain, Fernand Léger, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others of the same generation. Kahnweiler wanted as he said to defend artists he believed in, but only those who had no dealers and whom he believed were great artists. Rather than exhibiting the popular works of the past and present greats, Kahnweiler championed burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Alberto Giacometti, and others, who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse and Montmartre at the time. Thus, Paul Cézanne, although a great artist, was considered too old to be represented, and his work was being handled by Ambroise Vollard at the time.