Through the foundation and museum he founded, Alexander Tutsek helped raise the profile of glass art in Germany.
Romanian businessman Alexander Tutsek, who, with his wife, Eva-Maria Fahrner-Tutsek, founded the nonprofit glass art and photography foundation named Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung in Munich, Germany, has died at the age of 84. Tutsek was known for his activities as a collector and benefactor of glass artists, and, in 2000, he and his wife founded a nonprofit art center in an art-nouveau villa in Munich-Schwabing, where the foundation’s collection was exhibited. The Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung organized glass art exhibitions, published catalogues, and provided guided tours to the public. In 2008, the foundation added photography as an area of institutional focus.
Alexander Josef Tutsek was born in Romania and attended secondary school in Budapest, Hungary. After an unsuccessful attempt to defect to the West, he was sentenced to prison in 1947. Four years later, he escaped from a Hungarian forced-labor camp and fled to Vienna, where he worked as a journalist and started a press agency. He went to work for a refractory products manufacturer in Göttingen, Germany, and went on to take over the firm, and expand it.
With business success, Tutsek became an active supporter of arts organizations, and in 2002, created his own. The Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung set out to raise the profile of glass art in Germany and Europe, through exhibitions of the work of artists working in glass aroung the world, publishing catalogs, and directly supporting artists.
Tutsek is survived by his wife and the foundation’s chair Dr. Eva-Maria Fahrner-Tutsek, who will carry on the ideas and vision she shared with her late husband.