Charles Saatchi Biography
Charles Saatchi is an Iraqi-British businessman who co-founded the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi with his brother Maurice.
How old is Charles Saatchi? – Age
He is 80 years old as of 9 June 2023. He was born in 1943 in Baghdad, Iraq.
Charles Saatchi Family – Education
Charles is a Jewish man who was born in Baghdad, Iraq, as the second of four sons to rich couple Nathan Saatchi and Daisy Ezer. The name “Saatchi” (s’tchi), which means “watchmaker” in Persian, is derived from an Iranian Turkish name. This name has a lengthy history in Iran, and the majority of its bearers are Jewish. David (born 1937), Maurice (born 1946), and Philip (born 1953) are Saatchi’s brothers.
His father, a textile dealer, evacuated his family to Finchley, north London, in 1947, anticipating that the flight of tens of thousands of Iraqi Jews would soon make it difficult to avoid persecution. Nathan Saatchi bought two textile mills in north London and converted them into a profitable enterprise. The family would eventually settle into an eight-bedroom mansion on Hampstead Lane in Highgate.
Charles Saatchi Education
Christ’s College, a secondary school in Finchley, north London, was where Saatchi went to school. During this period, he became obsessed with American pop culture, particularly the music of Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry. Viewing a Jackson Pollock painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York was hailed as “life-changing” by him. He afterward went on to study at the London College of Communication.
Charles Saatchi Wife – Children
Doris Lockhart Dibley, an art and design journalist from Memphis, Tennessee, first met Saatchi in 1965. They tied the knot in 1973 and divorced in 1990. Kay Hartenstein, an American Condé Nast advertising executive, was Saatchi’s second wife. Nigella Lawson, a British journalist, novelist, and cook, became his third wife in 2003. In January 2011, they relocated to Chelsea, London, with their children Cosima and Bruno.
Saatchi was pictured with his hands around Lawson’s throat in June 2013, which was deemed misleading. He was formally cautioned for assault and accepted the caution freely. The couple divorced in July 2013, and they struck a confidential financial settlement. Saatchi and Lawson received a nisi decree and made a private financial settlement. Saatchi began dating Trinny Woodall, an English beauty entrepreneur and novelist, in 2013. Saatchi and Woodall allegedly divorced in March 2023.
Charles Saatchi Daughter
Saatchi’s daughter, Phoebe Saatchi-Yates, and her husband, Arthur Yates, will establish Saatchi Yates on Cork Street in London in October 2020.
Charles Saatchi Net Worth
He has an estimated net worth of $200 Million.
Charles Saatchi House
Saatchi purchased a 30,000 sq ft (2,800 m2) cement-floored and steel-girded warehouse at 98A Boundary Road in the residential London area of St John’s Wood in the early 1980s. Architect Max Gordon turned the building into the Saatchi Gallery, which opened to the public in February 1985 to exhibit the works Saatchi had gathered.
Charles Saatchi Books
My Name Is Charles Saatchi, and I Am An Artoholic was released in 2009 by him. It’s headed “Everything You Need To Know About Art, Ads, Life, God, And Other Mysteries And Weren’t Afraid To Ask” and has Saatchi’s responses to a variety of topics submitted by members of the public and media.
Charles Saatchi Art Collection
At the age of 26, Saatchi purchased his first work of art by Sol LeWitt, a New York minimalist, in 1969. Saatchi began his art collecting at the Lisson Gallery in Marylebone, London, which specialized in American minimalism. He then purchased the whole production of Robert Mangold. At one point, the Saatchi collection included 11 Donald Judd works, 21 Sol LeWitt works, 23 Anselm Kiefer works, 17 Andy Warhol works, and 27 Julian Schnabel works.
His tastes have shifted from American abstraction and minimalism to the work of the Young British Artists (YBAs), whom he initially encountered at Goldsmith’s Art School. Saatchi purchased Damien Hirst’s first major ‘animal’ installation, A Thousand Years, at the YBAs’ Gambler exhibition in 1990.
In 1991, he acquired large pieces by Hirst and Marc Quinn, helping to start their careers. His renown as a patron peaked in 1997, when a portion of his collection was displayed at the Royal Academy as part of the exhibition Sensation, which toured 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 solidifying the position of Hirst, Emin, and other YBAs.
From November to December 2009, he hosted a BBC television show called School of Saatchi in which he provided young aspiring painters a chance to demonstrate their work. He didn’t appear on the show and just communicated through an aide. Saatchi announced in July 2010 that he will be donating the Saatchi Gallery and over 200 works of art to the British public. The Saatchi Gallery was named one of the world’s most frequented art museums in 2014, according to an attendance study compiled by The Art Newspaper, with 1,505,608 visitors. According to the same poll, the gallery has staged 15 of the top 20 most visited shows in London during the last five years.