The Gagosian Gallery is a
modern 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
Richard Meier (born October 12, 1934) is an American abstract artist and architect, whose geometric designs make prominent use of the color white. A winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1984, Meier has designed several iconic buildings ...
,
Jean Nouvel
Jean Nouvel (; born 12 August 1945) is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of ''Mars 1976'' and ''Syndicat de l'Architecture'', France’s first labor union for architects. He has ob ...
, and
Annabelle Selldorf.
In 2011, a survey of art dealers by ''
The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
'' 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.
History and expansion
1980s
Larry Gagosian opened his first gallery in Los Angeles in 1980,
showing the work of young contemporary artists such as
Eric Fischl
Eric Fischl (born March 9, 1948) is an American painter, sculptor, printmaker, draughtsman and educator. He is known for his paintings depicting American suburbia from the 1970s and 1980s.
Life
Fischl was born in New York City and grew up on s ...
and
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat (; December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the neo-expressionism movement.
Basquiat first achieved notoriety in the late 1970s as part of the graffiti ...
.
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
Jasper Johns (born May 15, 1930) is an American painter, sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker. Considered a central figure in the development of American postwar art, he has been variously associated with abstract expressionism, Neo-Dada, and ...
". The Gagosian Gallery in New York City mounted exhibitions dedicated to the history of
The New York School,
Abstract expressionism
Abstract expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depressi ...
, and
Pop art by showing early work of
Robert Rauschenberg
Milton Ernest "Robert" or "Bob" Rauschenberg (October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American painter and graphic artist whose early works anticipated the Pop art movement. Rauschenberg is well known for his Combine painting, Combines (1954� ...
,
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Fox Lichtenstein ( ; October27, 1923September29, 1997) was an American pop artist. He rose to prominence in the 1960s through pieces which were inspired by popular advertising and the comic book style. Much of his work explores the relations ...
, and
Willem de Kooning
Willem de Kooning ( , ; April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. Born in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, he moved to the United States in 1926, becoming a US citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married pa ...
. During its first two years, the Madison Avenue space, once used by
Sotheby's
Sotheby's ( ) is a British-founded multinational corporation with headquarters in New York City. It is one of the world's largest brokers of fine art, fine and decorative art, jewellery, and collectibles. It has 80 locations in 40 countries, an ...
and
Parke-Bernet, presented work by
Yves Klein
Yves Klein (; 28 April 1928 – 6 June 1962) was a French artist and an important figure in post-war European art. He was a leading member of the French artistic movement of Nouveau réalisme founded in 1960 by art critic Pierre Restany. Klein wa ...
,
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (;''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''"Warhol" born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol ...
,
Cy Twombly, and
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter. A major figure in the abstract expressionist movement, Pollock was widely noticed for his "Drip painting, drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household ...
. Artists such as
Walter De Maria,
Francesco Clemente, and
Peter Halley
Peter Halley (born 1953) is an American artist and a central figure in the Neo-Conceptualist movement of the 1980s. Known for his Day-Glo geometric paintings, Halley is also a writer, the former publisher of ''index Magazine'', and a teacher; he ...
were represented by Gagosian.
1990s
Gagosian Gallery's second New York City location opened in the
SoHo neighborhood, in 1991. During the same year, the gallery convinced artists
David Salle
David Salle (born September 28, 1952; last name pronounced "Sally") is an American Postmodern painter, printmaker, photographer, and stage designer. Salle was born in Norman, Oklahoma, and lives and works in East Hampton, New York. He earned a B ...
and
Philip Taaffe to switch representation from long-term relationships with the
Mary Boone
Mary Boone (born 1952) is an American art dealer and collector. As the owner and director of the Mary Boone Gallery, she played an important role in the New York art market of the 1980s. Her first two artists, Julian Schnabel and David Salle, b ...
Gallery to Gagosian. The SoHo location showed younger artists such as
Ellen Gallagher,
Jenny Saville,
Douglas Gordon and
Cecily Brown.

The uptown gallery on Madison Avenue maintained its commitment to historical exhibitions by showing monumental sculptures by
Miró,
Calder and
Moore, as well as large-scale works by artists such as
Richard Serra
Richard Serra (November 2, 1938 – March 26, 2024) was an American artist known for his large-scale Abstract art, abstract sculptures made for Site-specific art, site-specific landscape, urban, and Architecture, architectural settings, a ...
,
Mark di Suvero,
Barnett Newman, and
Chris Burden
Christopher Lee Burden (April 11, 1946 – May 10, 2015) was an American artist working in performance art, sculpture, and installation art. Burden became known in the 1970s for his performance art works, including ''Shoot (Burden), Shoot'' (1971) ...
. In 1996, the
Damien Hirst
Damien Steven Hirst (; né Brennan; born 7 June 1965) is an English artist and art collector. He was one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) who dominated the art scene in the UK during the 1990s. He is reportedly the United Kingdom's richest ...
exhibition ''No Sense of Absolute Corruption'', was the first exhibition in America to show the series of Hirst animals in
formaldehyde
Formaldehyde ( , ) (systematic name methanal) is an organic compound with the chemical formula and structure , more precisely . The compound is a pungent, colourless gas that polymerises spontaneously into paraformaldehyde. It is stored as ...
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
Richard Meier (born October 12, 1934) is an American abstract artist and architect, whose geometric designs make prominent use of the color white. A winner of the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1984, Meier has designed several iconic buildings ...
in 1995. The Beverly Hills gallery mounted exhibitions by
Edward Ruscha,
Nan Goldin
Nancy Goldin (born 1953) is an American photographer and activist. Her work explores in snapshot-style the emotions of the individual, in intimate relationships, and the Bohemian style, bohemian LGBT subcultural communities, especially dealing w ...
,
Frank Gehry
Frank Owen Gehry ( ; ; born February 28, 1929) is a Canadian-American architect and designer. A number of his buildings, including his private residence in Santa Monica, California, have become attractions.
Gehry rose to prominence in th ...
,
Jeff Koons
Jeffrey Lynn Koons (; born January 21, 1955) is an American artist recognized for his work dealing with popular culture and his sculptures depicting everyday objects, including balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror- finish s ...
, and
Richard Prince
Richard Prince (born August 6, 1949) is an American painter and photographer. In the mid-1970s, Prince made drawings and painterly collages that he has since disowned. His image ''Untitled (Cowboy)'', a photographic reproduction of a photograph ...
. It also showed modern artists such as
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...
, 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. 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.
2000s
In the spring of 2000, Gagosian became an international gallery with the London opening of a Caruso St John-designed space on Heddon Street, near
Piccadilly
Piccadilly () is a road in the City of Westminster, London, England, to the south of Mayfair, between Hyde Park Corner in the west and Piccadilly Circus in the east. It is part of the A4 road (England), A4 road that connects central London to ...
.
[Charlotte Higgins (May 10, 2004)]
King's Cross a Go-Go as top US art dealer unveils new gallery
''The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
''. The UK gallery inaugurated its exhibitions program
with a performance by the Italian artist
Vanessa Beecroft
Vanessa Beecroft (born April 25, 1969) is an Italian-born American contemporary art, contemporary performance artist; she also works with photography, video art, sculpture, and painting. Many of her works have made use of professional models, so ...
, followed by an exhibition of works by Chris Burden. A second London gallery, also designed by Caruso St John, on Britannia Street, opened in May 2004 with a paintings and sculpture show by Cy Twombly. Comparable to the Chelsea (New York) exhibition space in size, this was then the largest commercial art gallery in London.
It accommodated large sculptures, video pieces, and installations such as
Martin Kippenberger's show, ''The Magical Misery Tour, Brazil''. The Heddon Street location closed in July 2005, and a new storefront space on Davies Street opened simultaneously with an exhibition of Pablo Picasso prints.
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
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626) was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England under King James I. Bacon argued for the importance of nat ...
and
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti (, , ; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, Drafter, draftsman and Printmaking, printmaker, who was one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century. His work was particularly influenced ...
, ''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.
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.
2010s
In November 2010, Gagosian opened its first Paris gallery, a 350-square-meter space (3,757 square feet) at 4 Rue de Ponthieu. The gallery was designed by architects Jean-Francois Bodin and Caruso St. John.
It opened with an exhibition of five new acrylic abstracts and five bronze sculptures by Cy Twombly. The 10 paintings were priced between $4 million and $5 million each, and sold before the gallery's official opening. In July 2012, following the Paris exhibition, ''Brazil: Reinvention of the Modern'', featuring
Neo-Concrete artists
Sérgio de Camargo
Sérgio de Camargo (April 8, 1930 – 1990) was a sculptor and relief maker, born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Sergio De Camargo studied at the Academia Altamira in Buenos Aires under Emilio Pettoruti and Lucio Fontana. Camargo also studied philo ...
,
Lygia Clark
Lygia Pimentel Lins (23 October 1920 – 25 April 1988), better known as Lygia Clark, was a Brazilian artist best known for her painting and Installation art, installation work. She was often associated with the Brazilian Constructivist moveme ...
,
Amilcar de Castro,
Hélio Oiticica
Hélio Oiticica (; July 26, 1937 – March 22, 1980) was a Brazilian visual artist, sculptor, painter, performance artist, and theorist best known for his participation in the Neo-Concrete Movement, for his innovative use of color, and for what ...
,
Lygia Pape, and
Mira Schendel, Gagosian held a sculpture exhibition of works by Brazilian artists in Rio de Janeiro as part of the ArtRio fair.
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
Le Bourget () is a commune in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.
The commune features Le Bourget Airport, which in turn hosts the Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace (Air and Space Museum). A very ...
, 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.
2020s
After the 2020 closure of the Howard Street location, Gagosian opened a new gallery in San Francisco in 2021, at the former Marciano Museum. It partnered with the
Golden Gate National Recreation Area
The Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA) is a U.S. National Recreation Area protecting of ecologically and historically significant landscapes surrounding the San Francisco Bay Area. Much of the park is land formerly used by the Unite ...
and the
Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy
The Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy is a nonprofit cooperating association that supports park stewardship and conservation in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area—the most visited national park in the U.S.
Recognized as one of the ...
to install two large-scale sculptures by Giuseppe Penone at
Fort Mason
Fort Mason, in San Francisco, California is a former United States Army post located in the northern Marina District, alongside San Francisco Bay. Fort Mason served as an Army post for more than 100 years, initially as a coastal defense site a ...
in 2021.
Business practices and trends
Free art exhibitions
Some Gagosian Gallery locations feature art and performance exhibitions, free of charge. Very few high-end art galleries are open to the general public.
According to
Condé Nast Traveler
''Condé Nast Traveler'' is a luxury and lifestyle travel magazine published by Condé Nast. The magazine has won 25 National Magazine Awards.
The Condé Nast unit of Advance Publications purchased ''Signature'', a magazine for Diners Club me ...
, Gagosian exhibitions "are often as exciting and thoughtfully curated as some of the world's best museums." As of 2022, Gagosian locations that offer free art exhibitions include the Rue de Ponthieu Paris gallery and the two Manhattan galleries in Chelsea.
Auction participation
Gagosian Gallery aims to maintain the price level of its artists by actively playing a role at art auctions.
* When
Christie's
Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, and it has additional salerooms in New York, Paris, Hong Kong, Milan, Geneva, Shan ...
established an auction record for Henri Matisse by selling a bronze relief for $48.8 million in 2010, it was Gagosian that bought the work.
* Gagosian Gallery purchased
Ed Ruscha's ''Angry Because It's Plaster, Not Milk'' (1965) for $3.2 million at
Phillips de Pury in 2010, establishing an auction record for that artist.
Prepayment
Gagosian and a consortium of other art dealers spent years finding buyers to prepay for Jeff Koons' giant ''Celebration'' sculptures. These buyers paid $2 million to $8 million, in advance, to own a single one of the artist's car-sized sculptures of balloon dogs and candy-colored hearts.
[Kelly Crow (April 1, 2011)]
The Gagosian Effect
''Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
''. Such arrangements are not without risk: In 2018,
Steven Tananbaum brought a case to the
New York Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the State of New York is the superior court in the Judiciary of New York. It is vested with unlimited civil and criminal jurisdiction, although in many counties outside New York City it acts primarily as a court of civil ju ...
against Gagosian Gallery and the studio of Jeff Koons over their alleged failure to deliver three of Koons' works for which he had prepaid more than $13 million.
Trends
Between 2003 and 2008, a number of artists switched from well-known galleries to Gagosian, such as
Anselm Reyle from
Gavin Brown's Enterprise;
John Currin from Andrea Rosen;
Mike Kelley from
Metro Pictures
Metro Pictures Corporation was a Film, motion picture production company founded in early 1915 in Jacksonville, Florida. It was a forerunner of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The company produced its films in New York, Los Angeles, and sometimes at le ...
;
Takashi Murakami
is a Japanese contemporary artist. He works in fine arts (such as painting and sculpture) as well as commercial media (such as fashion, merchandise, and animation) and is known for blurring the line between High art, high and low arts. His wo ...
from
Marianne Boesky; and Richard Phillips from Friedrich Petzel. Over the same time period, some artists who had been with Gagosian for many years departed, preferring representation by smaller galleries, including
Tom Friedman,
Mark di Suvero,
Ghada Amer, and the estate of Willem de Kooning, which moved to rival
Pace Gallery
The Pace Gallery is a contemporary and modern art gallery with 9 locations worldwide. It was founded in Boston by Arne Glimcher in 1960. His son, Marc Glimcher, is now president and CEO. Pace Gallery operates in New York, London, Hong Kong, ...
in 2010.
Legal issues
Tax evasion

In 2003, the
Internal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting Taxation in the United States, U.S. federal taxes and administerin ...
sued Larry Gagosian and three of his associates, accusing them of evading $26.5 million in taxes, interest, and penalties on a 1990 sale of contemporary art. The IRS charged Gagosian and his partners for deliberately shifting assets out of a company they created, Contemporary Art Holding Corp., to avoid paying taxes.
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
A sales tax is a tax paid to a governing body for the sales of certain goods and services. Usually laws allow the seller to collect funds for the tax from the consumer at the point of purchase. When a tax on goods or services is paid to a govern ...
on hundreds of art transactions from 2005 to 2015. Gagosian Gallery agreed to a $4.28 million settlement for
back taxes
Back taxes is a term for taxes that were not completely paid when due. Typically, these are taxes that are owed from a previous year. Causes for back taxes include failure to pay taxes by the deadline, failure to correctly report one's income, or ...
, interest, and penalties owed.
Copyright infringement
When French photographer Patrick Cariou launched a copyright lawsuit against Richard Prince in 2009, Larry Gagosian was named as a co-defendant, as he had displayed the disputed series of Prince paintings in a gallery exhibit titled ''Canal Zone''.
Contract breaches and other issues
In 2009, a deal that Gagosian Gallery had struck to buy $3 million in gold bricks for the work ''One Ton, One Kilo'' by the artist Chris Burden was frozen
after disclosure that the gold bricks had been acquired from a company owned by financier
Allen Stanford
Robert Allen Stanford (born March 24, 1950) is an American-Antiguan convicted financial fraudster, former financier, and sponsor of professional sports. He was convicted of fraud in 2012, having operated an eight billion dollar Ponzi scheme, and ...
. In March 2009, the
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street crash of 1929. Its primary purpose is to enforce laws against market m ...
had begun investigating Stanford for defrauding investors. Stanford was found guilty and sentenced to 110 years in prison for cheating investors out of more than $7 billion over 20 years, one of the largest
Ponzi scheme
A Ponzi scheme (, ) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays Profit (accounting), profits to earlier investors with Funding, funds from more recent investors. Named after Italians, Italian confidence artist Charles Ponzi, this type of s ...
s in US history.
In March 2011, British collector Robert Wylde sued the Gagosian Gallery for selling him
Mark Tansey
Mark Tansey (born 1949) is an American painter.
Early life and education
Mark Tansey was born in San Jose, California to Richard G. Tansey, an art historian, and Luraine Tansey, a slide librarian who invented one of the first computerized sl ...
painting, ''The Innocent Eye Test'' (1981), which had already been promised to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...
by the painting's owner, Jan Cowles. The case was settled for later that year.
In 2012, Gagosian Gallery was brought before the
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.
See also
*
Antwaun Sargent, a Gagosian Gallery director
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Art museums and galleries in Los Angeles
Art museums and galleries in Manhattan
Contemporary art galleries in the United States
Contemporary art galleries in France
Contemporary art galleries in London
Contemporary art galleries in Italy
Art museums and galleries established in 1980
1980 establishments in California