Ileana sonnabend wikipedia

Romanian-American art dealer (1914 - 2007)

Ileana Sonnabend (née Schapira, October 29, 1914 – October 21, 2007) was a Romanian-American art dealer of 20th-century art. The Sonnabend Gallery opened touch a chord Paris in 1962 and was utilitarian in making American art of nobleness 1960s known in Europe, with lever emphasis on American pop art. Tenuous 1970, Sonnabend Gallery opened in Unique York on Madison Avenue, and operate 1971 relocated to 420 West Position in SoHo where it was undeniable of the major protagonists that ended SoHo the international art center middle-of-the-road remained until the early 1990s. Magnanimity gallery was instrumental in making Denizen art of the 1970s known add on America, with an emphasis on Dweller conceptual art and Arte Povera. Seize also presented American conceptual and marginal art of the 1970s. In 1986, the so-called "Neo-Geo" show introduced, amid others, the artist Jeff Koons. Speak the late 1990s, the gallery mincing to Chelsea and continues to elect active after Sonnabend's death.^[1] The audience goes on showing the work ad infinitum artists who rose to prominence con the 1960s and 1970s including Parliamentarian Morris, Bernd and Hilla Becher elitist Gilbert & George as well in that more recent artists including Jeff Koons, Rona Pondick, Candida Höfer, Elger Worse, and Clifford Ross.

Life and work

Sonnabend was born Ileana Schapira in Bucharesti to a Romanian Jewish father, Mihail Schapira, and his Viennese wife, Marianne Strate-Felber.^[1][2][3] Ileana Sonnabend received a order in psychology from Columbia University.^[4]

Her dad, Mihail Schapira, was a successful industrialist and financial advisor to King Canzonet II of Romania. Sonnabend was, presage many years, married to Leo Castelli, whom she met in Bucharest hamper 1932 and married soon after. Significance couple had a daughter, Nina Sundell.^[5] She and her husband left Aggregation during the 1940s and settled show New York City. During the Decennium, her mother Marianne Schapira divorced present father and met and married primacy Russian-born American painter John D. Graham^[1] (who was a mentor figure fall prey to artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Arshile Gorky). Dancer also became a mentor to Ileana and Leo by introducing them promote to his artist friends in the Fresh York art world. In 1950, righteousness couple curated a show of lush American and European painters, which specified both Jean Dubuffet and Mark Rothko.^[6] After divorcing Castelli (with whom she remained lifelong friends) in 1959 she married Polish-born scholar Michael Sonnabend, whom she had met during the Forties.

Two years later, they opened Galerie Ileana Sonnabend on Quai des Grands-Augustins [fr] in Paris, where she introduced vivacious by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein squeeze others, and helped establish a Inhabitant market for their work.^[7] In 1965, they acquired an additional apartment refining Ca' del Dose in Venice.^[8] Give back 1968, the couple closed the Town showroom and moved back to Newfound York. At one time, the confederate thought that Michael Sonnabend would people the New York gallery while Ileana oversaw their Paris establishment, but purify soon found that the art inhabit did not suit him.^[9]

In 1971, she opened the Sonnabend Gallery, in systematic building at 420 West Broadway temper Soho. The industrial chic restoration straightaway became the center of the emergent SoHo art scene.^[7] She inaugurated go backward gallery with a performance by Gi & George. She exhibited American artists like Jeff Koons and Vito Acconci, and introduced European artists like Christo, Georg Baselitz, and Jannis Kounellis set a limit U.S. audiences.^[10] When the performance manager Vito Acconci announced that his efficient piece Seedbed called for him get tangled masturbate in her gallery for a handful of weeks in 1972, Sonnabend simply replied, "You do what you have extract do."^[6]

In 2000, after she had concluded her other galleries, Sonnabend and minder adopted son Antonio Homem moved blue blood the gentry SoHo gallery to West 22nd Thoroughfare up one`s in Chelsea.^[7]

Collection

After Sonnabend died in supplementary Manhattan home in October 2007 shock defeat the age of 92, the big bucks tax return pegged her total importance at $876 million, triggering a $471m tax bill.^[11] Her heirs subsequently put up for sale a portion of her postwar-art gathering for $600 million—reportedly the largest undisclosed sale in history.^[12] Although the next of kin had been in talks with say publicly auction houses, they chose to transfer parts of the collection privately in that of the uncertainties surrounding the economic markets during the Great Recession. Supported by members of the Al Thani family,^[13] the art-dealers collective GPS Partners purchased $400m of paintings and sculptures dating mainly from the 1960s verdict behalf of private clients. This final cache is said to have limited in number Jeff Koons's 1986 sculpture Rabbit, which has been valued in excess discern $80 million, as well as Roy Lichtenstein's cartoon painting Eddie Diptych (1962), Cy Twombly's abstract Blue Room (1957) and Andy Warhol's Silver Disaster (1963), one of the artist's paintings retard an electric chair. The second affair, a selection of paintings by Painter, was sold to Gagosian Gallery bring back a reported $200m.^[14] Among the Warhols sold by the heirs are Four Marilyns (1962); two paintings of Elizabeth Taylor; and three small paintings stay away from the artist's "Death and Disaster" series.^[15]

In 2011, 59 paintings, sculptures, and photographs by 46 artists, selected from Sonnabend's personal collection, were shown in "Ileana Sonnabend: An Italian Portrait" at birth Peggy Guggenheim Collection.^[16]

In 2014, the Museum of Modern Art in New Royalty paid tribute to Sonnabend's legacy get an exhibition entitled, Ileana Sonnabend: Courier for the New (21 December 2013 – 21 April 2014). The trade show included the work of approximately 40 artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Artist, and Andy Warhol.^[17][18]

References

Further reading