Gabriele Henkel

Gabriele Henkel (née Hünermann; 9 December 1931 - 28 September 2017), was a German art collector, art patron, author and artist. She was married to Konrad Henkel, the long-standing head of the Henkel Group.

Life Gabriele Hünermann was born in Düsseldorf, a daughter of Theodor Hünermann, chief physician of the Marien Hospital there. After a deprived war childhood without schooling, her father sent her to London to be an au pair at the age of 16. After which she worked as a journalist for the weekly magazines, The Observer and Newsweek, and was the youngest member of the Federal Press Conference when she met Konrad Henkel at the Rhenish Carnival. The couple married in 1955, she took her husband's last name.

From 1970 to 2000, she collected art from all over the world for the Henkel company, therefore building up the Group's art collection. The works are located in the offices, meeting rooms and staff canteens at the companies headquarters in Düsseldorf. The collection comprises about 4,000 works.

Since 1972 she was a member of the International Advisory Board of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Through Bazon Brock, she received a lectureship for art history at the University of Wuppertal in 1983 where she became an honorary professor for communication design.

In 2016, she exhibited 40 pieces from the collection of classical modern and contemporary art outside the company for the first time at the K 20 art collection in Düsseldorf. On 28 September 2017, an exhibition of Gabriele Henkel's works was opened at the Hetjens Museum in Düsseldorf. She played a decisive role in the design. She was not present at the vernissage; she died the following night at the age of 85.

Konrad and Gabriele Henkel are the parents of Christoph Henkel.

Literature

Tafelbilder. DuMont Reiseverlag, Cologne 1990, Les beaux restes – Bilder der Vergänglichkeit. Klinkhardt und Biermann, Munich 1995, Heine. Ein Bildermärchen. DuMont Reiseverlag, Cologne 1997, Gabriele Henkel: Weiß ist alle Theorie – Zwischenräume, Richter, Düsseldorff 2001, The Collection at Home – Sammlung Henkel. Zwei Bände, DuMont Literatur und Kunst Verlag, Cologne 2009, and Aquarelle – Malereien am Wasser. Grupello Verlag, Düsseldorf 2015, Die Zeit ist ein Augenblick: Erinnerungen. Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Munich 2017,