Product Code Database
The Gagosian Gallery is a modern art and contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. The gallery exhibits some of the most well-known artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. As of 2024, Gagosian employs 300 people at 19 exhibition spaces – including New York City, London, Paris, Basel, Beverly Hills, San Francisco, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong – designed by architects such as Caruso St John, Richard Gluckman, Richard Meier, Jean Nouvel, and Annabelle Selldorf.
In 2011, a survey of art dealers by The Wall Street Journal estimated that Gagosian Gallery had annual sales of about $1 billion. In May 2011 alone, half the works for evening sale by major auction houses in New York City were by artists represented by the gallery.
The business expanded from Los Angeles to New York: In 1989, a new, spacious gallery opened on the Upper East Side of Manhattan at 980 Madison Avenue, with the inaugural exhibition "The Maps of Jasper Johns". The Gagosian Gallery in New York City mounted exhibitions dedicated to the history of The New York School, Abstract expressionism, and Pop art by showing early work of Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, and Willem de Kooning. During its first two years, the Madison Avenue space, once used by Sotheby's and Parke-Bernet, presented work by Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, and Jackson Pollock. Artists such as Walter De Maria, Francesco Clemente, and Peter Halley were represented by Gagosian.
The uptown gallery on Madison Avenue maintained its commitment to historical exhibitions by showing monumental sculptures by Miró, Alexander Calder and Henry Moore, as well as large-scale works by artists such as Richard Serra, Mark di Suvero, Barnett Newman, and Chris Burden. In 1996, the Damien Hirst exhibition No Sense of Absolute Corruption, was the first exhibition in America to show the series of Hirst animals in formaldehyde tanks, a controversial part of the artist's oeuvre.
Andy Warhol was exhibited at both Manhattan galleries, some in collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation, including exhibitions of his Rorschach Paintings, Camouflage Paintings, Late Hand-Painted Paintings, Oxidation Paintings and the Diamond Dust Shadow Paintings. Other Andy Warhol works on display had been purchased jointly by Larry Gagosian and Thomas Ammann.
Gagosian opened a location in Beverly Hills designed by architect Richard Meier in 1995. The Beverly Hills gallery mounted exhibitions by Edward Ruscha, Nan Goldin, Frank Gehry, Jeff Koons, and Richard Prince. It also showed modern artists such as Pablo Picasso, Roy Lichtenstein, and Abstract Expressionism group exhibitions.
In September 1999, Gagosian Gallery moved from SoHo to West 24th Street, in New York's Chelsea neighborhood.Jeffrey Hogrefe, " Gagosian Pays $5.75 Million for Largest Gallery in Chelsea," The New York Observer, August 22, 1999 Architect Richard Gluckman designed the gallery in which Richard Serra presented the monumental sculpture, Switch, in November 1999. The large viewing space in Chelsea allowed Gagosian artists, such as Serra and Damien Hirst, to exhibit large-scale works with great flexibility. Gagosian held the Hirst show, Damien Hirst: Models, Methods, Approaches, Assumptions, Results and Findings at the West 24th Street location.
To complement the West 24th Street gallery in Manhattan, Richard Gluckman was commissioned to design a second Chelsea location, on West 21st Street; it opened in October 2006. A joint exhibition with the West 24th Street gallery, Cast a Cold Eye: The Late Works of Andy Warhol, launched Gagosian Gallery's third location in New York City. In 2009, the West 21st Street gallery held an exhibition of Pablo Picasso's later works entitled Mosqueteros, curated by Picasso historian John Richardson. The Madison Avenue location introduced a fifth-floor gallery space, set up to focus more on young and upcoming artists. Featuring works by Hayley Tompkins and Anselm Reyle, "Old Space New Space" was inaugurated in January 2007. The fifth-floor gallery has showcased the works of Steven Parrino, Mark Grotjahn, Isa Genzken, Dan Colen, and Dash Snow, among others. In November 2008, Gagosian expanded its Madison Avenue gallery to include the fourth floor of the building, with an inaugural exhibition of works by Francis Bacon and Alberto Giacometti, Isabel and Other Intimate Strangers, in collaboration with the Giacometti and Bacon Foundations.
Gagosian opened a gallery in Rome in 2007, exhibiting new works by Cy Twombly. The Italian space is a refurbished former bank on Via Francesco Crispi, built in 1921 and redesigned by Rome-based architect Firouz Galdo in collaboration with Caruso St John. The renovation transformed the traditionally classical space into a contemporary gallery while retaining its Roman character. The main hall of the building had a huge bay window; architects remodelled the opposite, formerly perpendicular wall to create an oval space with daylight streaming through the windows.Peter Popham (December 17, 2007), Gagosian turns to Rome for next stage of his art empire The Independent.
Strong relationships with Russian collectors and an expanding Russian art scene encouraged Gagosian to host temporary exhibitions in Moscow. As of 2008, buyers from Russia and other republics of the former Soviet Union accounted for half of Gagosian Gallery's total worldwide sales.John Varoli (September 23, 2008), Gagosian Makes Half of Global Sales to Russia, Director Says Bloomberg.
Later in 2010, Gagosian opened its first gallery in Switzerland, a 140-square-metre Art Deco space located off Rue du Rhône in Geneva's business district.
In 2011, Gagosian Gallery expanded its operations into Asia by opening its first permanent gallery in the region, a facility at the Pedder Building in Hong Kong.
In October 2012, Gagosian Gallery opened a new gallery in Le Bourget, a northeastern suburb of Paris. Designed by architect Jean Nouvel, the space was the 12th Gagosian location worldwide.
From May 2016 through 2020, Gagosian Gallery operated a space on Howard Street in San Francisco. Over the course of four years, it hosted shows by Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Jonas Wood, and Jay DeFeo.
In 2016, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance investigated Gagosian Gallery and its affiliate Pre-War Art Inc. (in Beverly Hills, California) for failing to pay New York State sales tax on hundreds of art transactions from 2005 to 2015. Gagosian Gallery agreed to a $4.28 million settlement for back taxes, interest, and penalties owed.
In March 2011, British collector Robert Wylde sued the Gagosian Gallery for selling him Mark Tansey painting, The Innocent Eye Test (1981), which had already been promised to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by the painting's owner, Jan Cowles. The case was settled for later that year.
In 2012, Gagosian Gallery was brought before the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in a lawsuit by Jan Cowles, who claimed that the gallery sold a painting, Girl in Mirror (1964) by Roy Lichtenstein, from her collection in 2008 or 2009 without her consent. Cowles and Gagosian agreed to settle the lawsuit in March 2013.
|
|
