Charles Saatchi

Saatchi's brothers are David (born 1937), Maurice (born 1946) and Philip (born 1953).

Charles Saatchi (تشارلز ساعتجي; born 9 June 1943) is an Iraqi-British businessman and the co-founder, with his brother Maurice, of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi.

In 1947 his father, a textile merchant, anticipated the flight that tens of thousands of Iraqi Jews were to take would soon make it difficult to avoid persecution and relocated his family to Finchley, north London.

Nathan Saatchi purchased two textile mills in north London and after a time, rebuilt a thriving business.

Eventually the family would settle into an eight-bedroom house in Hampstead Lane, Highgate.

Saatchi attended Christ's College, a secondary school in Finchley, north London.

During this time, he developed an obsession with US pop culture, including the music of Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Chuck Berry.

He has described as "life-changing" the experience of viewing a Jackson Pollock painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

He then progressed to study at the London College of Communication.

In 1965, Saatchi undertook his first advertising role as a copywriter in the London office of Benton & Bowles, where he met Doris Lockhart (later his first wife).

Saatchi paired up with art director Ross Cramer and they worked as a team at Collett Dickenson Pearce and John Collins & Partners before leaving in 1967 to open creative consultancy Cramer Saatchi.

In 1969, at age 26, Saatchi purchased his first work of art by Sol LeWitt, a New York minimalist.

Saatchi initially patronised the Lisson Gallery in Marylebone, London, which specialised in American minimalist works.

He later purchased an entire show by Robert Mangold.

In 1970, he started the advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi with his brother Maurice, which by 1986 – following its acquisition of advertising firm Ted Bates – had grown to be the largest ad agency in the world, with over 600 offices.

Successful campaigns in the UK included Silk Cut's advertisements in preparation for the ban on named tobacco advertising, and the Conservative Party's 1979 general election victory – led by Margaret Thatcher through the slogan "Labour Isn't Working".

The brothers led the business – the world's largest advertising agency in the 1980s – until they were forced out in 1995.

In the same year, the brothers formed a new agency called M&C Saatchi.

Saatchi is also known for his art collection and for owning Saatchi Gallery, and in particular for his sponsorship of the Young British Artists (YBAs), including Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

In the early 1980s, Saatchi purchased a 30000 sqft cement-floored and steel-girded warehouse at 98A Boundary Road in the residential London suburb of St John's Wood.

The building was transformed by architect Max Gordon into the Saatchi Gallery, which was subsequently opened to the public in February 1985 to exhibit the art Saatchi had collected.

At one point the Saatchi collection contained 11 works by Donald Judd, 21 by Sol LeWitt, 23 by Anselm Kiefer, 17 Andy Warhols and 27 by Julian Schnabel.

His taste has mutated from American abstraction and minimalism to the Young British Artists (YBAs), whose work he first saw at Goldsmith's Art School.

At the YBAs' 1990 Gambler exhibition, Saatchi bought Damien Hirst's first major 'animal' installation, A Thousand Years.

In 1991, he acquired major artworks by Hirst and Marc Quinn, becoming instrumental in launching their careers.

At the turn of 1995, Saatchi and his brother left the agency, and together founded the rival M&C Saatchi agency, taking with them many of their management and creative staff, as well as a number of clients – including British Airways.

His renown as a patron peaked in 1997, when part of his collection was shown at the Royal Academy as the exhibition Sensation, which travelled to Berlin and New York causing headlines and some offence (for example, to the families of children murdered by Myra Hindley, who was portrayed in one of the works), and consolidating the position of Hirst, Emin and other YBAs.

In 2009, he published the book My Name Is Charles Saatchi And I Am An Artoholic.

Subtitled "Everything You Need To Know About Art, Ads, Life, God And Other Mysteries And Weren't Afraid To Ask", it presents Saatchi's answers to a number of questions submitted by members of the public and journalists.

From November to December 2009, he had a television programme on the BBC called School of Saatchi in which he gave young aspiring artists an opportunity to showcase their work.

He made no appearance in the programme, only communicating through an assistant.

In July 2010, Charles Saatchi announced he would be donating the Saatchi Gallery and over 200 works of art to the British public.

In 2013, he received a police caution for assaulting his wife, Nigella Lawson.

Charles Saatchi is Jewish, born in Baghdad, Iraq, the second of four sons, to the wealthy family of Nathan Saatchi and Daisy Ezer.

The name "Saatchi" ساعتچی (sā'ātchi), which means "watchmaker" in Persian, originates from a Turkish name from Iran.

This name has a long history in Iran and its bearers are mostly Jewish.

The Saatchi Gallery featured in a list of the most visited art museums in the world, based on an attendance survey for 2014, compiled by The Art Newspaper, with 1,505,608 visitors.

In the same survey, the gallery was shown to have hosted 15 of the 20 most visited exhibitions in London over the last 5 years.

Unusually for a creative consultancy, they took on employees: John Hegarty – previously Saatchi's art director at Benton & Bowles, who would later go on to run rival agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty – and Jeremy Sinclair, who as of 2016 still retains a senior role at M&C Saatchi.

In addition to offering consulting with ad agencies they also took on some clients directly.