Sprüth Magers has expanded from its roots in Cologne (Germany) to become an international gallery dedicated to exhibiting the very best in groundbreaking modern and contemporary art. With galleries located in Berlin Mitte, London’s Mayfair and the Miracle Mile in Los Angeles–as well as an office in Cologne and an outpost in Hong Kong–Sprüth Magers retains close ties with the studios and communities of the German and American artists who form the core of its roster.
Read MoreThe gallery emerged amid an extraordinary outburst in contemporary art that took place in Cologne in the early 1980s. Its first iteration as Monika Sprüth Gallery opened in 1983 with an exhibition of paintings by Andreas Schulze and was soon followed by exhibitions of Rosemarie Trockel and Peter Fischli David Weiss. Over the next few years George Condo, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler and Cindy Sherman all showed at the gallery and have continued to do so for the last thirty years. In 1991 a second gallery opened in Cologne under the name of Philomene Magers. Early exhibitions included Ad Reinhardt’s 'Black Paintings', Robert Morris’s 'felt pieces' and John Baldessari’s photographs and text paintings from the 1960s. The two galleries merged into a single entity in 1998 and in 2000 the Munich space opened with Ed Ruscha’s exhibition Gunpowder and Stains.
In 2003 Sprüth Magers Lee opened in London with an exhibition of works by Donald Judd. In 2007 Sprüth Magers relocated to Grafton Street, Mayfair; on show was a selection of new photographs by Andreas Gursky. In 2008 the gallery established its flagship space in a former dancehall in Berlin Mitte–not far from the city’s Museum Island. The gallery debuted with Thomas Scheibitz and George Condo.
The latest chapter in the gallery’s history came to fruition in February 2016, with the launch of its space in Los Angeles. Located on Wilshire Boulevard, just across the road from LACMA, it is housed in a two-storey building designed in the late 1960s by legendary West Coast architects William L. Pereira & Associates. It was originally created as part of a complex completed in 1971 that includes the tallest building of the Miracle Mile district, a plaza and reflection pool. The 14,000 square foot space was remodeled as a gallery by the London-based architect Andreas Lechthaler and Berlin-based architect Botho von Senger und Etterlin. The interior features vintage furniture by female California-based designers.
Known for its rigorously curatorial approach to its program and for a deep and enduring devotion to the artists it represents, the gallery has, over the past three decades, fostered close and cooperative relationships with museums and curators worldwide. Meanwhile it continues its tradition of commissioning new scholarship and creating innovative books and publications.
Sprüth Magers now works with over 60 artists and estates. While continuing to work with mid-career artists such as Cao Fei, Thomas Demand, Sterling Ruby and Kara Walker, the gallery regularly broadens its program with up-and-coming younger artists such as Cyprien Gaillard, David Ostrowski, Michail Pirgelis, Pamela Rosenkranz, Analia Saban, Alexandre Singh, Kaari Upson, Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin. The program is rounded off with important and influential senior artists such as Reinhard Mucha, Frank Stella, the late Richard Artschwager and the Estates of Keith Arnatt, Bernd & Hilla Becher, Hanne Darboven, Craig Kauffman and Otto Piene.
The Ocula Advisory team select six highlights from Art021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair's 8th edition.
First launched in 2012, Gallery Weekend Berlin returns this year between 11 and 13 September 2020.
In Berlin, where the pandemic permits, digital viewing rooms are being remade offline. Elsewhere, galleries are mounting ever richer online presentations.
Closed since the middle of March, galleries in central London will finally reopen to visitors from next Monday.
Anish Kapoor, Louise Bourgeois, Rachel Whiteread, Gerhard Richter. These may not be names that spring to mind when you think of the British Museum, but they all have work filed away in its extensive archive of prints and drawings. 'Pushing Paper: Contemporary Drawing from 1970 to Now' lifts a lid on a lesser-known collection at a museum renowned...
At the pinnacle of Kara Walker's 13-metre-high fountain in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, a Black woman's breasts and slashed jugular spurt water. It is horrifying. Maybe not so when you perceive the water as emerging only from her breasts, although the supposed excess layered onto Black femininity might jump out, but it chills to locate the source...
It can be tiring traipsing around the annual Frieze London art fair in Regent's Park – which is why, when you pass Tokyo gallery Taro Nasu's booth, you may find yourself drawn to a black vending machine. If you're after refreshment, though, prepare for disappointment – because this automated device is an installation by British conceptual artist...
By the late 1980s, I had pretty much stopped looking at contemporary art. I no longer trusted my eyes to see what the art world had to offer, in part because I couldn't see the forest for the trees. Back then, the trees glistened with so much gold and so many pendants celebrating boy achievement, amen, that the product of their fame and riches –...
Reinhard Mucha: Showing the show As a young artist in the 1970s, German sculptor Reinhard Mucha was skeptical of showing his work in museums. Since then, many of his large installations have directly addressed the simple idea of being in a museum, encouraging visitors to be aware of the gallery itself as a way to look more closely at the art.
The mind of American artist George Condo has been referred to as a place where 'Picasso meets Looney Tunes.' Watch him at work in his New York-studio where he draws and paints his take on a 19 th -century painting by Manet.
'I kind of draw like you’re walking through the forest, where you don’t really know where you’re going, and you just start from some point and randomly travel through the paper until you get to a place where you finally reach your destination.' Condo studied music theory at college, but soon realised that it was too formal and rigid for him, and...
First published on Nowness: Ed Ruscha took Matthew Donaldson on a Los Angeles ride through memory lane, from the artist’s Culver City studio—that started life as one of Howard Hughes’ aircraft parts factories—to Silverlake and around Echo Park where the filmmaker lived as a child. “Almost more...
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