Alum John Berggruen's Gallery Hits 45, Relocates for Millennials

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE -- Many of the works in the show have not been seen in public since he sold them 25 years ago or more. Pieces by Roy Lichtenstein and Ed Ruscha, he sold not long after he opened his gallery, across the street from the current location. Berggruen had grown up in the city and graduated from San Francisco State in 1966. He’d worked at a few galleries and was looking for “my own little space so I wouldn’t get lost in the shuffle of life.” He had an advantage in that because his father, Heinz Berggruen, was a well-known dealer in Paris, where he was one of the major print dealers in the world, representing Matisse and Picasso, among others. Heinz Berggruen, who had come to San Francisco in the 1930s as a refugee from Nazi Germany, served in the U.S. Army in World War II and had remained in Paris after the war.