Jacques Gelman, an émigré who was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, moved to Mexico from Eastern Europe in 1941 and became a movie mogul who produced many films with Mario Moreno, who was best known as the actor Cantinflas. Mr. Gelman and his wife, Natasha Zahalka Gelman, a Czech immigrant from Moravia, became avid art collectors. Jacques Gelman died in 1986 and his widow died in 1998 leaving 85 classic modernist works to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, including fourteen paintings of Picasso, nine paintings of Henri Matisse, nine paintings of Joan Miro, five paintings of Bonnards, four paintings of Georges Braque, three Legers, three Grises,three Tanguys, Two Balthuses, two Vlamincks, and works by Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Giacometti, Piet Mondrian, Renoir and Vuilllard.
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