Biography

Jose Mugrabi was born to a Syrian-Jewish family in Jerusalem, Israel

Israel

The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

. He grew up in the Mahane Yehuda neighborhood. His family managed a grocery store in Nahalat Ahim. At the age of 16, he went to Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

 to stay with relatives and became involved in the textile business. Starting as an errand boy, he became one of the country's major importers. In 1982, he moved to New York, where he met art dealer Jeffrey Deitch and began collecting art.

Mugrabi lives in Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 with his wife, Mary.

Art collection

Jose Mugrabi owns the world's largest collection of paintings by Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

. His art collection includes works by Renoir, Picasso, Rodin, Ernst, Daumier, Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst

Damien Steven Hirst is an English artist, entrepreneur and art collector. He is the most prominent member of the group known as the Young British Artists , who dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s. He is internationally renowned, and is reportedly Britain's richest living artist,...

 and Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons

Jeffrey "Jeff" Koons is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces....

, in addition to 800 Warhols.

In November 1988, at Sotheby's

Sotheby's

Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish...

 in New York, he set a new world record for Warhol's work when he purchased "Twenty Marilyns" for $3.96m. In May 2002 he acquired one of Duchamp's Fountain Readymades

Readymades of Marcel Duchamp

The readymades of Marcel Duchamp are ordinary manufactured objects that the artist selected and modified, as an antidote to what he called "retinal art". By simply choosing the object and repositioning or joining, titling and signing it, the object became art...

for $1 million.