Charles Saatchi ( born 9 June 1943)
The life cycle 1 2 4 8 7 5
Important years of life
1958 5
1963 1
1964 2
1966 4
1970 8
1978 7
1985 5
1990 1
1991 2
1993 4
1997 8
2005 7
2012 5
2017 1
2018 2
2020 4
2024 8
2032 7
2039 5
In 1970, he started the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi with his brother Maurice, which by 1986 – following its acquisition of advertising firm Ted Bates – had grown to be the largest ad agency in the world, with over 600 offices…
In the early 1980s, Saatchi purchased a 30,000 sq ft (2,800 m2) cement-floored and steel-girded warehouse at 98A Boundary Road in the residential London suburb of St. John’s Wood. The building was transformed by architect Max Gordon into the Saatchi Gallery, which was subsequently opened to the public in February 1985 to exhibit the art Saatchi had collected.
His taste has mutated from American abstraction and minimalism to the Young British Artists (YBAs), whose work he first saw at Goldsmith’s Art School. At the YBAs’ 1990 Gambler exhibition, Saatchi bought Damian Hirst’s first major ‘animal’ installation, A Thousand Years. In 1991, he acquired major artworks by Hirst and Marc Quinn, becoming instrumental in launching their careers. His renown as a patron peaked in 1997, when part of his collection was shown at the Royal Academy as the exhibition Sensation, which travelled to Berlin and New York causing headlines and some offence (for example, to the families of children murdered by Myra Hindley, who was portrayed in one of the works), and consolidating the position of Hirst, Emin and other YBAs…
Marriages
Saatchi first met Doris Lockhart Dibley (as she was then known) in 1965 when she was a copy group head above him at Benton & Bowles. She was a native of Memphis, Tennessee[29] and Kevin Goldman describes her as “a sophisticated woman who spoke several languages, knew a great deal about art and wine and who had graduated from Smith College and the Sorbonne”.[3] She became known during their marriage as an art and design journalist, with particular knowledge of American art and minimalism. They lived together for six years[30] before getting married in 1973 and divorcing in 1990.
Saatchi’s second wife was Kay Hartenstein (to whom he was married from 1990 to 2001[32]) an American Condé Nast advertising executive from Little Rock, Arkansas. Together they have a daughter, Phoebe…