ART PROJECTS

Doctor Ambrosius was one of those exquisite personages of the old school, educated in prestigious European academies, perhaps in Vienna or Prague. He dedicated his life to the investigation of the meaning of beauty, studying its various manifestations in literature and music, in painting, sculpture, and photography. His inquiries took him to travel the world, where in the most unexpected corners he encountered people dedicated to the creation of art. He met painters and musicians, poets and dancers, and many others who taught him of the beauty inherent in the creative process. But Doctor Ambrosius longed for more. He began to collect examples of all that that interested him and wandered the world accumulating pictures, books, musical scores, and antiquities, until he filled his house with wonderful and precious works of art. Then, he filled a warehouse, and another one, and yet another, which, given the hermetic secrecy of his distinguished personality, were kept under lock and key, like a secret cabinet.

I met him many years later, when he was already a well-known collector and was an assiduous visitor to the gallery. One day we were studying a woodcut by Kirchner that he was enthusiastic about, when he asked me if I knew what, more than anything, he longed to obtain before he died. Imagining that he was referring to some unattainable treasure, a Holy Grail that he had not been able to acquire during his wanderings, I remained quiet, expecting to hear of an opportunity lost, of the one that got away. After a few moments, without taking his eyes off the woodcut, he replied: “what I want more than anything is to learn how to see.”