One morning in 1968, the Swiss art gallery owner Bruno Bischofberger visited Andy Warhol at his studio in New York. Mr. Warhol was by then famous for his silk-screen prints of Elvis and his stacks of Brillo boxes, but Mr. Bischofberger was interested in a previous phase of his career, when he was primarily a painter.
Mr. Warhol declared that he had moved on from painting and offered Mr. Bischofberger his choice of the old canvases. The gallerist eagerly picked out 11, including works showing Superman, Batman and Coke bottles. Impressed that he bought so many — and at a high price — Mr. Warhol offered a lucrative bonus: a right to first refusal on his future work.
With that exchange, Mr. Bischofberger sealed a relationship that would rank him among the leading gallerists of the late 20th century.
Mr. Bischofberger went on to play a key role in the raucous art market of the 1980s, when a torrent of money made in booming financial markets fueled a mania for artists like Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente and Jean-Michel Basquiat — all of whom he represented at his galleries in Zurich and St. Moritz, Switzerland.
”He brought me up to St. Moritz, and he introduced me to a lot of people I never would have met,” Mr. Schnabel said in an interview. “He gave you the sense that your art was international.”
Mr. Bischofberger died on May 9 in Zurich. He was 86. His gallery announced the death, but did not provide further details.
Mr. Bischofberger was more than just a buyer and seller of art. He became close friends with several of the artists he worked with, in some cases literally making them part of his family. The Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely was godfather to Mr. Bischofberger’s daughter Nina, and Mr. Warhol was godfather to his son, Magnus. Mr. Bischofberger, in turn, was godfather to Mr. Schnabel’s son Vito.
His impact on Mr. Warhol’s career was immense. Mr. Bischofberger put down a quarter of the initial capital to start Mr. Warhol’s magazine, Interview, an investment he later traded to Mr. Warhol for more art.
In the early 1970s, he suggested that Mr. Warhol offer to make silk-screens of some of Mr. Bischofberger’s highest-profile clients. The long-running series — which included a 1971 silk-screen of Mr. Bischofberger himself — not only provided the artist with a steady stream of income; it also became some of the defining work of his career.
He played a similarly important role in the too-short career of Mr. Basquiat, whose work he first encountered in 1981 in New York. When he heard, soon after, that the artist had left his gallerist, Mr. Bischofberger swooped in. He became Mr. Basquiat’s exclusive worldwide representative, gave him a $20,000 monthly retainer (about $70,000 today) and offered to host him in Switzerland whenever he needed to get away.
Mr. Basquiat spent almost every Christmas with the Bischofbergers and even painted a work, “Pakiderm 3” (1983), with one of the gallerist’s daughters, Cora, after telling Mr. Bischofberger that the artists who inspired him most were young children.
Mr. Basquiat greatly admired Mr. Warhol and, in 1984, Mr. Bischofberger introduced the two men. He suggested they collaborate on a series of paintings, a few of which they made with Mr. Clemente. The resulting art received mixed reviews at the time but has since become highly prized.
Mr. Basquiat died of a drug overdose in 1988, at 27. Eight years later, Mr. Schnabel made a biopic about him, “Basquiat,” starring Jeffrey Wright. David Bowie played Mr. Warhol, and Dennis Hopper played Mr. Bischofberger.
Bruno Franz Bischofberger was born on Jan. 1, 1940, in Zurich, where his father was a doctor and his mother was a dentist. He studied art history, archaeology and folklore at the University of Zurich and opened his first gallery, City Gallery, when he was 23.
He came to prominence in 1965 with his show “Pop Art,” the first major European exhibition of American artists like Mr. Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and James Rosenquist.
Around the same time, he began making monthly trips to New York, becoming a primary link between the Manhattan art scene and European artists and collectors. His ability to build close connections to artists bore fruit when several, including Dan Flavin and Sol LeWitt, offered to create site-specific works for his gallery.
Mr. Bischofberger married Christina Clifton, an American living in Switzerland, in 1971. She survives him, along with their children, Nina, Lea, Cora and Magnus Bischofberger; and 10 grandchildren.
Unlike many of the superstar gallerists who emerged in the 1980s and built far-flung outposts, Mr. Bischofberger remained close to home, never growing beyond his Zurich and St. Moritz galleries.
By 2015, he had closed both and bought a 250,000-square-foot former factory outside Zurich. With the help of his daughter Nina, an architect, and her husband, Florian Baier, he converted it into a sprawling private museum.
He filled it with Warhols, Schnabels and Basquiats, along with his immense collection of modern furniture and Swiss folk paintings — thousands of works that few people outside his close circle had ever been able to see.
“His greatest pleasure was to go sit in the middle of his collection,” Mr. Schnabel said. “If ever there was an art lover, this was the guy.”
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