Gagosian Gallery is a contemporary art gallery that began in Los Angeles in 1980, where it showed young contemporary artists including Eric Fischl and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It expanded to New York in 1989 with a gallery at 980 Madison Avenue in Manhattan’s Upper East Side, inaugurated by The Maps of Jasper Johns. The New York spaces presented exhibitions focused on The New York School, Abstract expressionism, and Pop art, and showed early works by Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Willem de Kooning, Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, and Jackson Pollock. The gallery later opened a second New York location in SoHo and a Beverly Hills space designed by Richard Meier in 1995. As of 2024, Gagosian Gallery operates 19 exhibition spaces in cities including New York, London, Paris, Basel, Beverly Hills, San Francisco, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong, and employs 300 people. Its exhibition spaces were designed by several architects, including Caruso St John, Richard Gluckman, Richard Meier, Jean Nouvel, and Annabelle Selldorf.
Gallery Network and Market Influence
Gagosian Gallery is owned and directed by Intro and presents works by some of the most well-known artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. As of 2024, the gallery employs 300 people across 19 exhibition spaces. These spaces are located in New York City, London, Paris, Basel, Beverly Hills, San Francisco, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong. The exhibition spaces were designed by architects Caruso St John, Richard Gluckman, Richard Meier, Jean Nouvel, and Annabelle Selldorf. The gallery has also been noted for its market influence: a 2011 survey by The Wall Street Journal estimated annual sales of about $1 billion, and in May 2011 half the works for evening sale by major auction houses in New York City were by artists represented by the gallery.
Expansion Across New York and Beyond
Gagosian Gallery opened its first gallery in Los Angeles in 1980, where it showed young contemporary artists including Eric Fischl and Jean-Michel Basquiat. The gallery expanded to New York in 1989 with a new space at 980 Madison Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, inaugurated with The Maps of Jasper Johns. The Madison Avenue gallery became associated with exhibitions devoted to The New York School, Abstract expressionism, and Pop art, and it showed early works by Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, and Willem de Kooning. It also presented works by Yves Klein, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, and Jackson Pollock in a space formerly used by Sotheby's and Parke-Bernet. The gallery represented artists such as Walter De Maria, Francesco Clemente, and Peter Halley.
In 1991, a second New York location opened in SoHo. This space showed younger artists including Ellen Gallagher, Jenny Saville, Douglas Gordon, and Cecily Brown, and it was part of a period in which David Salle and Philip Taaffe switched representation from Mary Boone Gallery to Gagosian Gallery. The Madison Avenue gallery also mounted large sculpture and installation exhibitions, including monumental sculptures by Miró, Calder, and Moore, as well as large-scale works by Richard Serra, Mark di Suvero, Barnett Newman, and Chris Burden. In 1996, the gallery held Damien Hirst: No Sense of Absolute Corruption, featuring Hirst animals in formaldehyde tanks.
Andy Warhol was shown at both Manhattan galleries, sometimes in collaboration with the Andy Warhol Foundation. The gallery presented Warhol's Rorschach Paintings, Camouflage Paintings, Late Hand-Painted Paintings, Oxidation Paintings, and Diamond Dust Shadow Paintings, and it also purchased Warhol works jointly with Thomas Ammann.
The gallery opened a Beverly Hills location in 1995, designed by architect Richard Meier. That space exhibited Edward Ruscha, Nan Goldin, Frank Gehry, Jeff Koons, and Richard Prince, as well as modern artists Pablo Picasso and Roy Lichtenstein and group exhibitions focused on Abstract Expressionism. In New York, Gagosian moved from SoHo to West 24th Street in Chelsea in September 1999. The Chelsea space was designed by architect Richard Gluckman and provided a large viewing area for major works, including Richard Serra's Switch in November 1999 and Damien Hirst: Models, Methods, Approaches, Assumptions, Results and Findings.
International Expansion of Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery became an international gallery with a London opening on Heddon Street near Piccadilly in spring 2000. The London space was designed by Caruso St John and began its exhibitions program there. The gallery later expanded through a series of new locations in Europe and Asia. In 2007, it opened a gallery in Rome with new works by Cy Twombly. The Rome space occupied a refurbished former bank on Via Francesco Crispi, originally built in 1921 and redesigned by Firouz Galdo and Caruso St John.
The gallery also used temporary exhibitions in Moscow, reflecting strong relationships with Russian collectors. As of 2008, Russian and former Soviet Union buyers accounted for half of Gagosian Gallery's total worldwide sales. In 2010, the gallery opened its first Paris location at 4 Rue de Ponthieu, a 350-square-meter space designed by Jean-Francois Bodin and Caruso St. John. That same year, it opened its first gallery in Switzerland, a 140-square-meter Art Deco space off Rue du Rhone in Geneva. In 2011, it opened its first permanent Asian gallery in the Pedder Building in Hong Kong.
Further expansion followed in 2012 with a new gallery in Le Bourget, a northeastern Paris suburb, designed by Jean Nouvel. This was the gallery's 12th location worldwide. The gallery also held Brazil: Reinvention of the Modern featuring Neo-Concrete artists in Paris in July 2012, and a Brazilian sculpture exhibition in Rio de Janeiro as part of the ArtRio fair in the same month.
San Francisco Locations and Expansion
Gagosian Gallery operated a location on Howard Street in San Francisco from May 2016 through 2020. During those four years, the gallery presented shows by Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Jonas Wood, and Jay DeFeo. The Howard Street location closed in 2020. In 2021, Gagosian opened a new San Francisco gallery in the former Marciano Museum, marking a continued presence in the city.
Fort Mason Sculpture Installation
In 2021, Gagosian Gallery was involved in a public art project at Fort Mason through partnerships with the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy. The collaboration resulted in the installation of two sculptures by Giuseppe Penone. The project reflects the gallery's history and expansion in relation to public art presentation and its connection to a broader park setting.
Exhibitions and Gallery Practices
Gagosian Gallery has been noted for business practices that differ from those of many high-end art galleries, since very few such galleries are open to the general public. Some Gagosian locations feature free art and performance exhibitions, and as of 2022 this included Rue de Ponthieu in Paris and two galleries in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood. Cond Nast Traveler described Gagosian exhibitions as being as exciting as top museums. The gallery has also been associated with market activity beyond exhibitions, including a role at art auctions intended to help maintain artist price levels. One reported example involved Gagosian and an art dealer consortium securing buyers to prepay for Jeff Koons' Celebration sculptures, with individual works reportedly sold in advance for between 2 million and 8 million dollars. A 2018 New York Supreme Court case was later filed by Steven Tananbaum against Gagosian and Koons' studio over non-delivery of prepaid works. The gallery has also seen notable artist movement, with artists including Anselm Reyle, John Currin, Mike Kelley, Takashi Murakami, and Richard Phillips joining between 2003 and 2008, while others such as Tom Friedman, Mark di Suvero, Ghada Amer, and the Willem de Kooning estate departed for smaller galleries or rivals, including Pace Gallery in 2010.
Legal Disputes and Tax Matters
Gagosian Gallery has been involved in a number of legal and financial disputes over tax compliance, copyright, and artwork sales. In 2003, it was sued by the Internal Revenue Service for evading $26.5 million in taxes, interest, and penalties, and was also charged with shifting assets out of Contemporary Art Holding Corp. to avoid paying taxes. In 2016, the gallery was investigated by the New York Attorney General and the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance for failing to pay New York State sales tax, and it later agreed to a $4.28 million settlement for back taxes, interest, and penalties.
The gallery was also named as a co-defendant in a 2009 copyright lawsuit filed by Patrick Cariou against Richard Prince, connected to the display of Prince paintings in the Canal Zone exhibit. Other disputes included a $3 million gold bricks deal frozen in 2009 in connection with Chris Burden's One Ton, One Kilo, a lawsuit brought by British collector Robert Wylde in 2011 over the sale of Mark Tansey's The Innocent Eye Test, and a 2012 suit by Jan Cowles over the sale of Roy Lichtenstein's Girl in Mirror. Both of the latter cases were later settled.