Calouste Sarkis Gulbenkian
Businessman of Armenian origin (Escutari, Turkey, 1869-Lisbon, 1955).Educated and nationalized in England (1902), Gulbenkian increased his family's fortune by partnering with Shell to exploit Iraqi oil since the late nineteenth century.In 1912 he founded his own company, the Turkish Petroleum Company, which after the disappearance of the Turkish Empire and the establishment of the British mandate in Iraq, went on to expand under the name of Iraq Petroleum Company (1920).Much of the fortune he amassed with the oil boom in the first half of the twentieth century went to acquiring works of art, assembling an extraordinary collection in his palaces in London and Paris.During the Second World War (1939-45) he sought refuge in Portugal, a country where he would establish his residence since 1942.He made artistic donations to the Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon, precedent of the testamentary disposition by which he bequeathed most of his collections and large financial means for the institution in Portugal of a Foundation that bears his name, dedicated to cultural, scientific, educational and charitable purposes.Since 1969 the Foundation's collections have been exhibited to the public at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon.
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