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Top 200 Collectors

Black-and-white portrait of a middle-aged white man

Carl Gustaf Ehrnrooth

Helsinki

Construction and investments

Contemporary Scandinavian, European, and American art

Overview

The Ehrnrooths are descended from a Finnish noble family. Today they are the biggest owners of the Finnish construction company YIT, whose headquarters is located in the country’s capital, Helsinki. Carl Gustaf Ehrnrooth’s father, Casimir Ehrnrooth, was a former chairman of the Finnish telecom company Nokia.

Carl Gustaf Ehrnrooth studied economics at the Swedish School of Economics, and business administration, computer science, and environmental law at the University of Helsinki. He is now a private investor with Corbis Investments S.A., a firm based in Luxembourg whose investments include stock in the consulting and engineering firm Pöyry, and leads Finnish textile and clothing design company Marimekko.

He is a founding member of the board of trustees of the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art Foundation and, in 2008, joined the Guggenheim Foundation’s board of trustees. According to a statement released by the foundation at the time, Ehrnrooth’s interests included converting a stable on his family’s land into a private museum to house more than 500 works by  leading contemporary “Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and, most recently, European and American artists as well.” That same year, he exhibited a large selection of his works by Finnish artists at Pro Artibus, a museum in Tammisaari, Finland.

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