Gijs van Hensbergen is a Dutch art historian, food critic and Hispanist. After training at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London for a BA Hons and Postgraduate research in History of Art he worked for the Knoedler Gallery, in London and New York. Following this, he made the rather eccentric decision to devote 5 years of his life to the art of the Master Chef of the Chaine des Rotisseurs as a suckling pig specialist in Segovia, Spain. Gijs van Hensbergen is now the Grand Knight of the Noble Order of the Silver Whisk.

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Recent academic forays include a post as a Harry Ransom Research Fellow, at the University of Texas in Austin in 2011, and guest lectures at the Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City, University of Bristol, Museo del Prado, Queen Sofia Institute, New York, Seattle Art Museum, Cheltenham Literary Festival, Dulwich Picture Gallery, Museo Nacional de Arte Contemporaneo, Reina Sofia, National Gallery, London, Hay Festival at Wye and Segovia, University of Castile and La Mancha, and at the prestigious El Escorial summer school, Universidad de Complutense, Madrid.

                                                             

Van Hensbergen’s projects and TV work include his collaboration with John Richardson on A Life of Picasso 2010-12. He scripted the award winning South Bank Show on Sir Antony Caro-Sculptor, and the series  Raiders of the Lost Arts for the Discovery Channel. He appears frequently on BBC4 and Radio 4, TV3 and TV España. In March 2013 Gijs van Hensbergen was the main interviewee on Lara Logan's inspirational CBS 60 Minutes profile of Gaudi's breathtaking Sagrada Familia - "God's Architect". The Hessischer Rundfunk 40 minute documentary  on Gijs van Hensbergen in 2007 focussed on his writing of Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-century Icon. 

Checkerboard Film Foundation interviews  'John Richardson: The Art of Picasso (1933-1973)' in New York. Perspectives: Portillo on Picasso, interview with Gijs van Hensbergen for ITV.

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He has also contributed articles to The Guardian, The Times, Wall Street Journal, the Economist, El Pais, La Vanguardia, Country Life, Apollo, The Burlington Magazine, Vogue, The Independent, Restauradores, amongst many others.



Gijs van Hensbergen leads specialist guided tours to Spain and the United States.



Presently he is writing a book for Bloomsbury Publishers on the great American art collectors and has just finished a book on Gaudi's Sagrada Familia.