Established | 1925 |
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Location | Bury Street, St James', London, England |
Type | Art gallery, modern art, contemporary art |
Founder |
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Website | www |
The Mayor Gallery is an art gallery located on Bury Street, London, England. Since its foundation by Fred Mayor in partnership with Douglas Cooper in 1925, it has promoted modern and contemporary art. [1] [2] Since the early 1970s, under the new impulse given by James Mayor, Fred Mayor's son, the Gallery started to focus actively on the work of contemporary American artists from the Pop art movement but also Conceptual art and Abstract expressionism such as Eva Hesse, Roy Lichtenstein, Agnes Martin, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Ryman, Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol. More recently, taking further its interest for Minimal art and Dada, the Gallery has been promoting artists of the international Zero (art) movement, including Heinz Mack, Otto Piene amongst others. [3]
The Mayor Gallery opened in 1925 at 37 Sackville Street. The gallery closed in 1926, and reopened in 1933 at 18 Cork Street, in an area regarded as the historic art district of London. [4] Many foreign artists were exhibited for the very first time in England at the Mayor Gallery including major ones such as Alexander Calder and Paul Klee. In its early years the Mayor Gallery was also instrumental to the creation of Unit One, [5] a British group formed by the painter Paul Nash in 1933 with fellow artists Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Edward Wadsworth, Edward Burra and others to promote Modern art, architecture and design.
The German Jewish refugee art dealer Alfred Flechtheim worked for the Mayor Gallery after his art gallery was Aryanized by Nazis in Germany. [6] Flechtheim' gallery records were left with Mayor but were destroyed. [7] [8] [9] [10]
At his death, Flechtheim left his gallery records and personal library (now destroyed) with Fred Mayor, founder of Mayor Gallery.
Alfred Flechtheim's hope was to relocate to Paris or New York with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler or Paul Rosenberg but in December 1933 he moved to London and worked with the Mayor Gallery. From 1934 he represented Kahnweiler's Galerie Simon in London and desperately went back and forth to Paris to make a living. In London he organized exhibitions of works by Picasso, Gris, Léger and Marie Laurencin and up until 1936 he managed to enter and leave Nazi Germany on several occasions at great personal risk to see his wife Betty who has stayed in Berlin because she was unable to pay Jewish 'flight tax.'
Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler was a German-born art collector, and one of the most notable French art dealers of the 20th century. He became prominent as an art gallery owner in Paris beginning in 1907 and was among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and the Cubist movement in art.
Otto Piene was a German-American artist specializing in kinetic and technology-based art, often working collaboratively. He lived and worked in Düsseldorf, Germany; Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Groton, Massachusetts.
Günther Uecker is a German painter, sculptor, op artist and installation artist.
Unit One was a British grouping of Modernist artists founded by Paul Nash. The group included painters, sculptors and architects, and was active from 1933 to 1935. It held one exhibition, which began at the Mayor Gallery in Cork Street, London, and then went on an extended tour, closing in Belfast in 1935. The artists planned the group at meetings held at the Mayor Gallery; Paul Nash announced its creation in a letter to The Times on 12 June 1933. A book by Herbert Read, Unit One: the modern movement in English painting, sculpture, and architecture, was published at the time of the exhibition. Despite its brief period of activity, the group is regarded as influential in establishing the pre-eminence of London as a centre of modernist and abstract art and architecture in the mid-1930s.
Heinz Mack is a German artist. Together with Otto Piene he founded the ZERO movement in 1957. He exhibited works at documenta in 1964 and 1977 and he represented Germany at the 1970 Venice Biennale. He is best known for his contributions to op art, light art and kinetic art.
Curt Valentin was a German-Jewish art dealer known for handling modern art, particularly sculpture, and works classified as "degenerate", seized from public museums or looted from private collectors by the Nazi regime in Germany.
Zero was an artist group founded in the late 1950s in Düsseldorf by Heinz Mack and Otto Piene. Piene described it as "a zone of silence and of pure possibilities for a new beginning". In 1961 Günther Uecker joined the initial founders. ZERO became an international movement, with artists from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, and Italy.
Alfred Flechtheim was a German Jewish art dealer, art collector, journalist and publisher persecuted by the Nazis.
Gerhard von Graevenitz was a German kinetic artist, co-founding member of the Nouvelle Tendance and member of the op-art movement. He also belonged to the international circle of the Zero-Group. He is seen as one of the uncompromising representatives of the constructive-concrete art of the younger generation.
Wolfgang Beltracchi is a German former art forger and visual artist who has admitted to forging hundreds of paintings in an international art scam netting millions of euros. Beltracchi, together with his wife Helene, sold forgeries of alleged works by famous artists, including Max Ernst, Heinrich Campendonk, Fernand Léger, and Kees van Dongen. Though he was found guilty for forging 14 works of art that sold for a combined $45m (£28.6m), he claims to have faked "about 50" artists. The total estimated profits Beltracchi made from his forgeries surpasses $100m.
Portrait of Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler is an oil on canvas painting by Pablo Picasso in the Analytical Cubism style. It was completed in the autumn of 1910 and depicts the prominent art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who played an important role in supporting Cubism. The painting is housed in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Léonce Rosenberg was an art collector, writer, publisher, and one of the most influential French art dealers of the 20th century. His greatest impact was as a supporter and promoter of the cubists, especially during World War I and in the years immediately after.
Eduarda Emilia Maino, known as Dadamaino, was an Italian visual artist and painter. She was a member of the Milanese avant-garde of the 1960s.
The Dutch Nul Group, which consisted of Armando, Jan Henderikse, Henk Peeters and Jan Schoonhoven (1914-1994), manifested itself in form and name in 1961. On 1 April 1961, a stone's throw from the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum, Galerie 201 organized the ‘Internationale tentoonstelling van NIETS’. The 'Manifest tegen niets' and 'Einde' ('Ending'), a pamphlet published at the same time, were among the first activities of the Nul group. ‘We need art like we need a hole in the head,’ the pamphlet 'Einde' states; ‘From now on the undersigned pledge to work to disband art circles and close down exhibition facilities, which can then finally be put to worthier use.’ The 'Einde' pamphlet imagines a new beginning, as Armando and Henk Peeters had already proclaimed in texts written several years earlier for the Dutch Informals.
Waddington Custot is a London-based art gallery specialising in modern and contemporary art. Formerly known as Waddington Galleries, it has been situated on Mayfair's Cork Street since 1958.
Margarete Lauter was a German art dealer with the first Art Gallery for international contemporary art established in 1963 in Mannheim (Germany) after the Second World War 1945 mainly presenting works by German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Romanian, Belgian, Hungarian, Israeli, Slovenian, Austrian and US artists.
Alexander Vömel, or Voemel, was a German gallery owner and Nazi party member who took over the gallery of the Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim when it was Aryanized in 1933.
Israel Ber Neumann also: Jsrael Ber Neumann, J. B. Neumann, or I. B. Neumann was a German-US art dealer and publisher who was instrumental in establishing 20th-century art in Germany and the United States
The Art Dealer Alfred Flechtheim is a 1926 oil painting by the German artist Otto Dix. It portrays the German Jewish art dealer and collector Alfred Flechtheim. It was obtained by Berlin's National Gallery in 1961 and is held at the Neue Nationalgalerie.
Galerie Würthle was an Austrian art gallery, aryanized under the Nazis, that existed from 1881 to 1995.