Inge Rodenstock  

Inge Rodenstock (b. 1936, Tubingen; d. 2023, Grünwald) was born into a family associated with the textile industry. She was trained at the Oskar Kokoschka School of Seeing in Salzburg and the avant-garde Academy of Düsseldorf. Rodenstock laid the groundwork for her vision as a future collector through her professional ties with the influential Schmela Gallery (Düsseldorf).  

Rodenstock always collected following her own taste, as opposed to speculative interests. She focused on the art of pioneering creators in the 1960s who were members of movements like the ZERO Group, Arte Povera, Pop Art, and Minimalism; later, she continued to acquire works by contemporary artists. Her house in Grünwald (a Munich 

district) merged art and life, as if it were her own private gallery. 

Dimitris Daskalopoulos 

Dimitris Daskalopoulos (b. 1957, Athens) is a Greek entrepreneur who was behind the transformation of his family’s business into the largest food empire in Greece. Interested in art since his childhood, in the 1990s he began to collect contemporary works, including several iconic pieces, like Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (1917/64), which he purchased in 1999. 

For years, Daskalopoulos acquired post-war and contemporary art, weaving a rich web of relationships among pieces centered on the body as a source of creation and vehicle for existential, social, and ideological struggle. 

In line with his belief that “art becomes meaningful when the public interacts with it,” in 2014 Daskalopoulos donated his collection to several institutions in Athens, Chicago, 

New York, and London, which were joined in 2025 by the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. 

 

Collector Inge Rodenstock with her favorite object: Bob-tail, 1991 sculpture by Jeff Koons 2017. Photo: Salvatore Vinci.