Saatchi, Charles

Charles Saatchi, (born June 9, 1943, Baghdad, Iraq), Iraqi-born British advertising executive who was perhaps best known as a collector of contemporary art. His brother Maurice was a full partner in his advertising concerns.

Saatchi was born into a Jewish family and was still a preschooler when his family emigrated from Iraq to London. By age 18 he had begun to work as a copywriter in the advertising business. Together with Maurice, he founded Saatchi & Saatchi in 1970. By 1986 the company—which became part of a larger conglomerate—was considered to be the largest advertising firm in the world, with offices throughout the world. Remarkably creative and efficient, Saatchi & Saatchi was an early proponent of global advertising. In Great Britain it was identified with the Conservative Party, whose campaigns it helped to articulate during the years in which Margaret Thatcher was at the helm. Challenges from within and outside of the firm caused both brothers to resign in the mid-1990s, soon to open the smaller firm of M&C Saatchi.

By the early 1980s Charles was reportedly spending millions annually on contemporary paintings and sculptures. He collected American minimalists (including Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Sol LeWitt), as well as many other major contemporary American and European artists. These activities were closely monitored in the art world and had a considerable impact on the fortunes of individual artists.

In 1985 he opened the Saatchi Gallery in London. In the 1990s his great interest in contemporary British art (that of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, for example) was an important catalyst in the development of the YBAs (Young British Artists). Saatchi exhibited the YBA works he had collected in the Sensations exhibition, which caused a twofold scandal when it was displayed at the Brooklyn Museum in New York in 1999. Then-mayor Rudy Giuliani took great exception to the display of Chris Ofili’s Holy Virgin Mary, a painting of the Madonna that included the artist’s signature balls of elephant dung. A further controversy arose in the art community over the appropriateness of a public museum displaying the contents of a private collection, particularly as some of the objects in the show reentered the market soon after the exhibition. In 2019 the Saatchi Gallery registered as a nonprofit organization.

Saatchi published a number of books, including Be the Worst You Can Be: Life’s Too Long for Patience and Virtue (2012), in which he answered questions from readers and journalists, and Beyond Belief; Racist, Sexist, Rude, Crude, and Dishonest (2015), a collection of older advertisements that are now widely seen as offensive. The twice-divorced Saatchi married British celebrity cook and author Nigella Lawson in 2003 (divorced 2013).