Walter Oppenheimer, cofounded fashion house, was art collector
LOS ANGELES -- Walter Oppenheimer, a business entrepreneur, art collector, and philanthropist who cofounded Helga, a line of women's special-occasion clothing, died Aug. 1. He was 92.
In 1947, Mr. Oppenheimer launched the company with his wife, Helga, as the designer of suits, dresses and evening clothes that were sold in specialty stores. He managed the business until the couple sold it in 1986.
"Walter was of a different stripe," said Sylvia Sheppard, West Coast fashion editor for Women's Wear Daily in the 1950s. "He was very courtly. The rest of the Los Angeles market was full of aggressive young people. Walter and Helga were more traditional."
On their frequent business trips to Europe to buy fabric, the Oppenheimers began to collect art by Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and other modern European masters.
"It all started with one little Braque painting that we both fell in love with in Paris," Mr. Oppenheimer once said of the collection.
The couple recently donated several dozen artworks, primarily drawings, to the Hammer Museum at the University of California at Los Angeles. They also funded an exhibition gallery in the museum that is named in their honor.
"The Oppenheimer Collection fills in our early Modern European area," said Cynthia Burlingham, director of the museum's Grunwald Center for art works on paper. "We have had prints from that period, but not as many drawings."
Mr. Oppenheimer was born in Berlin. After graduating from high school he moved to London in the 1930s and worked in retail. There he met Helga Kallman, another native Berliner, who was working as a fashion designer. They immigrated to the United States in 1938 and settled in New York, where they married and continued working in retail. Helga Oppenheimer died in 2003. 