Iwan Wirth and Manuela Hauser | Debrett's 500 2015

Iwan and Manuela Wirth

INTERNATIONAL GALLERISTS AND COLLECTORS

‘The art world’s most powerful couple’, husband and wife collectors and dealers Iwan and Manuela Wirth topped the ArtReview Power 100 in 2015 for the first time, reflecting their enormous influence on the way in which art is bought and sold. Iwan Wirth opened contemporary art gallery Hauser & Wirth in Zurich in 1992 with Manuela’s mother Ursula Hauser, and he and Manuela have gone on to open galleries in London, New York and Somerset, with a new space due to open in Los Angeles in 2016. The couple were introduced by retail magnate Ursula after Iwan approached her for money to purchase a Picasso and a Chagall. He was apparently so distracted by his benefactor’s daughter that after meeting her he promptly drove his car into a fence. Three decades after their marriage, the Wirths have built an art empire whose revenue was recently estimated at £145 million.