Few men wouldn’t leap at the chance to live like Gunter Sachs – here was the man who married Brigitte Bardot after a courtship that included commissioning a helicopter to fly over her villa on the French Riviera, scattering her garden with thousands of red roses. Admired not only by beautiful women, Gunter Sachs was also a favourite in the most exclusive art circles: Andy Warhol, Jean Fautrier and Yves Klein – these and many other artists could claim to be his friends.

Now, the Villa Stuck Museum in Munich is offering art lovers a unique peek into Sachs’ trove of 1960s art treasures, showing the personal favourites of the great man himself. Among the many highlights on display is a Warhol screen print of a lip-pouting Bardot – a timeless image that once hung in pride of place in Sachs’ penthouse in the Palace Hotel in St Moritz.

The collection on display at the Villa Stuck sheds new light on a man who once claimed he had “never worked a day in my life” – and yet who achieved far more than most men would in ten lifetimes; a man who seemed to love art almost as much as he loved beautiful women. After strolling around the exhibition halls, what perhaps strikes the visitor more than anything else is that here was a man who loved to enjoy himself. So raise a glass to Gunter Sachs, the last of a dying breed of playboys, men of vast achievement – and above all, world-class pleasure seekers...

The exhibition will be open until January 20, 2013.

Photos: Villa Stuck