At age 27, Berggruen moved back to San Francisco and decided to open his own gallery in May 1970 in a second floor walk-up at 257 Grant Avenue with $5,000 worth of Joan Miró prints lent to him on consignment from his father.
[10][11][12][13] Berggruen is known is known for exhibiting and selling works by Californian artists, Wayne Thiebaud,[14][15] Richard Diebenkorn, and Ed Ruscha, as well as other artists associated with the Bay Area Figurative Movement such as Nathan Oliveira, Elmer Bischoff, Paul Wonner, and David Park.
Berggruen has played an instrumental role in developing several notable private[16][17] and institutional collections on the West Coast by introducing these collectors to important artists, as well as helping to launch the careers of then-emerging artists, including Tom Sachs, Barry McGee, Lorna Simpson, and Jennifer Bartlett.
Berggruen has exhibited work by such influential artists as Georgia O'Keeffe, Philip Guston, Mark Tansey, Joseph Cornell, Ellsworth Kelly, Claes Oldenburg, Frank Stella, Jim Dine, Alexander Calder, and Henry Moore.
[23] The Berggruens live in an 1854 home[2] on San Francisco’s Russian Hill that was redesigned by Robert A.M. Stern in 1986.