Art patron and speculator - Saatchi & Saatchi founder Charles Saatchi turns 75

Thirty years ago, the cheeky art student Damien Hirst organized the exhibition "" in London's Docklands and invited the advertising guru and art collector Charles Saatchi. He saw works by Sarah Lucas, Gary Hume and Hirst - and started buying.

In 1992, he exhibited his collection as "Young British Artists", which gave the new movement its name. Their works are now worth millions, and according to reports in the British media, Saatchi's fortune is said to be worth more than 100 million euros.

He was born in Baghdad in 1943 into a Jewish-Iraqi family. When he was four years old, the family moved to London. The young Charles liked to play truant from school and then took the first job he could get as a copy boy in an advertising agency. When one of the copywriters fell ill, he was allowed to fill in - and designed a successful ad for a breed of chicken.

At 27, he founded Saatchi & Saatchi with his younger brother Maurice. While Punk took over the street, they helped Margaret Thatcher to power with an advertising campaign in 1979 and became one of the most successful agencies in the world in the mid-1980s.

Epoch-making exhibition "Sensation"

Saatchi's first wife Doris infected him with her penchant for American minimalism and abstract contemporary art. In the mid-1980s, he began buying and exhibiting works by Cindy Sherman, Sigmar Polke and Andy Warhol. London - until then far behind Cologne and New York - gradually became a center for contemporary art.

His support for the former Goldsmiths students around Damian Hirst culminated in the infamous "Sensation" exhibition at the venerable Royal Academy in 1997. It divided the art world: some detested the works of conceptual artists such as Tracey Emin and Marc Quinn as insubstantial and accused them of making money with rebellion and shock effects: Marcus Harvey's portrait of serial killer Myra Hindley dismayed with a mosaic of childish handprints.

Feared like a despot

Others rejoiced at the breath of fresh air on the scene: "Artists condemned him for buying and selling their work in large quantities, while praying that he would not ignore their exhibitions," art critic Brian Sewell wrote at the time. "Dealers, curators and collectors surrendered to the influential power of his patronage and obediently followed."

Saatchi's impulsive and sales-driven approach to collecting changed the art trade itself and drove up prices. "In Saatchi's time, art sales turned into a greasy futures exchange," wrote David Lee of the art magazine The Jackdaw"in which works are mainly traded for investment, profit-taking and self-aggrandizement by pathetic, vulgar people."

It was not only the market that changed, but also the self-confidence of up-and-coming artists; Saatchi's attention not only promised hype, but sometimes also a rapid downfall. The filmmaker Ben Lewis described him in the Guardian as a "string-puller of contemporary artists. With his checkbook, he built and broke their reputation."

"I am an artoholic"

In his book "My name is Charles Saatchi and I am an artoholic", the notoriously publicity-shy art patron defended himself against the accusations: "I don't buy art just to make artists happy, any more than I want to make them sad when I sell their work. Don't you think you're being a bit melodramatic?"

"Sensation" marked the peak of his passion for collecting. Since then, he has brought contemporary art from China, the USA and the Middle East to London. But he never managed to create a worldwide boom again.

In the summer of 2013, the paparazzi attached themselves to the provocative but shy pensioner: TV chef Nigella Lawson - his third wife - confessed to taking cocaine because he had made her life a living hell. Saatchi is now dating former TV presenter Trinny Woodall. (Uli Hesse/DPA/SDA)