A memoir of perhaps the most astonishing art deal of the 20th century, by the late and charismatic art dealer Oliver Hoare ( 1945-2018).
In July 1994, on the tarmac of Vienna airport, a clandestine swap saw the government of Iran acquire the most significant part of the 16th century Shahnameh of Shah Tahmasp – the greatest manuscript in the history of Persian painting – in return for Willem de Kooning’s Woman III, which had languished unseen for decades in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art. The culmination of many years’ work, this extraordinary and ambitious exchange, which often hung on a spider’s thread, was described at the time as the ‘cultural coup of the 1990s’. Oliver Hoare was the linchpin of the deal. Privately and posthumously published on the 30th anniversary of the exchange.
Handsomely bound in dark blue cloth; many photographs.
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