Alan Bee is the pseudonym of a well-known German industrialist and businessman (Karlsfeld 1940 – Munich 2018) who besides all his official activities was for decades an art collector with a secret and intense passion for painting. In his will he authorised the diffusion of his own works after his death, while maintaining his real identity secret.
His passion for painting was always shared with his passion for bees and their world. He loved the natural surroundings of his native Bavaria and was influenced as a young man by the experiences with honey of Joseph Beuys. He has connected them with the profound sense of materials and the insertion of objects as advocated by painters like Carl Buchheister, with whom a youthful meeting in Hannover was fundamental, Emil Schumacher, with whom Bee subsequently had various fruitful meetings in Karlsruhe, and Bernard Schulze, whom he frequented in Cologne. The results are quite surprising.