Doris Lockhart

1937 – 2025

Doris Lockhart, formerly Doris Saatchi, passed away early this morning 6 August. Doris came into our lives at a pivotal moment and had a major influence on our development as artists. We first met her when Maureen Paley brought her to our Whitechapel studio when we had just finished restoring it from a ruin with our friend Ashley Hicks in 1989. We had recently completed a number of new sculptures.

 
Following her decisive influence in shaping the hugely influential Saatchi Collection in Boundary Road, and her divorce from Charles Saatchi, Doris decided to continue collecting contemporary art on her own but to shift her focus away from established North American and Continental European artists to emerging young British artists. In this regard she was ahead of her erstwhile husband in recognising the talent of manny of those who were soon to be described as the YBA’s
 

Two of the three sculptures she bought from us that day, ‘Adjoining Rooms’ 1989 and ‘Conversation Seat’ 1986, are now in the collections of Tate and The Norwegian National Museum of Contemporry Art in Oslo, while she kept the third sculpture ‘Museums in Motion’ 1989  in her own collection at home in Eaton Square. We became good friends and remained so up until her death. We shall miss her kind and generous spirit, her wit and wisdom, and her acute judgement of art, architecture and design. Doris Jean Lockhart, interior designer, author and patron of contemporary art, architecture and design, 1937-2025.

Photo by Vicki Couchman: Doris at home with ‘Museums in Motion’ 1989.