With limited resources he and his wife Sally Wile-Ganz built one of the most important collections of contemporary art in the 20th century.
The son of Saul Ganz and his wife, the former Ruth Wendell, he attended public schools and the City College of New York before going to work at D. Lisner Company, a costume jewelry business, that had been founded by his uncle in 1875.
Lisner costume jewelry was sold all over the United States, but maintained a small sales force of about ten reps throughout the country.
[2] Ganz started collecting art in his teenage years with the purchases of watercolors by Louis Eilshemius and Jules Pascin and an oil painting by Raphael Soyer.
(Steve Wynn, seller of the painting, had arranged to sell it to Steven A. Cohen for $140 million, which would have made it the highest price ever paid for a painting, but he infamously poked a 6 inch hole in the picture with his elbow while showing it to some prominent guests in 2007.
[1] Knowing that Picasso by then had acquired the status of an Old Master, the Ganzes began shortly afterward to collect Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and later Frank Stella.
In every case the Ganzes worked as equal partners and showed a degree of discrimination that was much admired by museum professionals.
The Ganzes accumulated works by Jasper Johns, Eva Hesse, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Mel Bochner and other artists whom the couple championed and befriended.
Their understanding of emerging leaders of the art world earned Victor appointments in leading museums and associations.
Christie's had put the Ganz collection up for viewing for a month preceding the auction at its Park Avenue galleries and at its annex at 308 East 59th Street.