The photo above is of one of my father's best friends: writer Erich Maria Remarque ("All Quiet On the Western Front", "Three Comrades"). Around 1942 when Remarque was in New York, he would visit my father (Sam Salz) many times at my father's apartment at the Ambassador Hotel where they would have long discussions on art. The writer was also a collector of Impressionist paintings and would buy several works from him (Cezanne, Degas and others). Along with Marlene Dietrich, they would all play cards at the Ambassador while World War Two raged on and Hitler marched through one country after another. The film director Billy Wilder("Some Like It Hot") was also an expatriot who would stop by and buy art as well. Later my father would visit Remarque and his wife the actress Paulette Goddard when he was near his home in the town of Porto Ronco, Switzerland. As a result of their friendship, my brother Andre was given the middle name of "Eric". Here is a link to the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Center in Osnabruck, Germany: http://www.remarque.uos.de/internet.htm
"The Art Dealer Sam Salz"("Kunsthandler"), a photo by August Sander from his series on professions during the 1920s Weimar period in Germany. This photo was taken of my father in front of his gallery in Cologne where he sold Chagall, Arp and Braque. Two Chagalls he sold, "Birthday" and "Over Vitebsk", eventually were bought by the Museum of Modern Art in New York where they are still in the collection. The then mayor and later chancelor Konrad Adenauer attended one of the gallery's openings. For showing and selling modern art, my father got on the list of the rising Nazi party. He then left for Paris. Here is a link to "Birthday" on the MoMA website: http://www.moma.org/collection/provenance/provenance_object.php?object_id=79360
"The Asparagus", by Edouard Manet, Musee D'Orsay, 16.5"-21.5", oil on canvas, gift of Sam Salz. My father was a poor painter in Paris before he had a gallery in Germany and later became a famous art dealer in America. He was in awe of the paintings in the Louvre then and did not forget that later on when he had this Manet which was hanging in his bedroom. I used to laugh at it's simplicity when I was a child. His response was:"Don't laugh! It's a masterpiece!". He gave the painting to the Musee D'Orsay in 1959. Here is a link to the painting on the Musee D'Orsay's website:
"Portrait of Sam Salz", by James Ensor, 1929, opaque watercolor on paper, 10"-12", the Philadelphia Museum of Art. James Ensor was a Belgian painter who's paintings were sometimes of masks and sculls. They were often deliberate political commentaries and many times disturbing in their black humor. My father Sam Salz was one of Ensor's dealers and a good friend who set up some of his later still lifes with sea shells. Above is a portrait by Ensor which is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art which owns paintings that were once in the collections of Louis Stern and Henry McIlhenny who both bought from Sam Salz. Ensor dedicated it to him: "For Salz, the ace of art past, present and future".
