Tarica

Tarica, a mathematician by training and the secret weapon behind a handful of other topflight collections, says that when the two men entered his gallery “they already knew art history, art critics, museums.”

The Things Yves Loved Collins, Amy Fine 2009

For the next 15 years, while it was still financially feasible, the scholarly Tarica and the intrepid connoisseurs binged on art history.

The Things Yves Loved Collins, Amy Fine 2009

The Milchior and Tarica families, Etam's main shareholders, with 39 percent and 11 percent stakes, respectively, both said they would not take part in the buyback offer.

Reuters: Top News 2010

Tarica went on to locate for the eager aesthetes one of Matisse’s first colored-paper cutouts, The Dancer, from 1937 – 1938 — which they unostentatiously nailed to the door of the narrow room that served as Bergé’s bedchamber.

The Things Yves Loved Collins, Amy Fine 2009

A sampling of the 19th-century game Tarica bagged for his favorite clients would include Ingres’s early Portrait of the Countess de Larue, inscribed “Year XII” (the French Revolutionary – calendar date for circa 1804), and a haunting 1816 – 17 Géricault double portrait of the siblings Élisabeth and Alfred de Dreux.

The Things Yves Loved Collins, Amy Fine 2009

“You couldn’t see Mondrians in France then,” Tarica explains.

The Things Yves Loved Collins, Amy Fine 2009

“I got the Brancusi from Fernand Léger’s widow, Nadia, a Russian who had been his student,” Tarica says.

The Things Yves Loved Collins, Amy Fine 2009