David Zwirner Celebrates 30th Anniversary in Los Angeles

After starting his career in music, Zwirner followed in his father's footsteps to become one of the world's most successful art dealers. The gallery is marking its anniversary with a group show and a new space.

It's been 30 years since David Zwirner opened his first gallery in SoHo, New York City, at the age of 29. In that time, he has expanded to London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles, and cemented a spot among the big four mega galleries, alongside Gagosian, Pace, and Hauser & Wirth.

This week, the gallery is celebrating its anniversary with a group show at all three of their L.A. galleries—a brand new three-storey flagship space at 606 North Western Avenue joins adjacent galleries at numbers 612 and 616, which opened in May 2023.

An illustration by cartoonist R. Crumb accompanies the promotional materials for the exhibition David Zwirner: 30 Years, which features works by all of the gallery's artists—83 of them are currently listed on the gallery's website.

Los Angeles-based art critic Jonathan Griffin attended a press preview for the exhibition this week.

'Walking through the three disconnected galleries of Zwirner L.A. is a bit like exploring the gallery's extensive programme: very high quality, exquisitely tasteful, perfectly presented, but no centre—no, dare I say it, point of view,' he told Ocula.

'There are avenues of connection, but as people often say of Hollywood itself, there's no "there" there!'

A 2013 New Yorker profile of David Zwirner similarly proffered that he's too professional—too efficient, too quick to embrace new marketing and media strategies in a trade that sees good business at odds with the exuberance of art. But perhaps that's unsurprising given his background.

Zwirner was born in Cologne in 1964. His father, Rudolf, co-founded the Kölner Kunstmarkt, the first international contemporary art fair, in 1967. He grew up so immersed in art that legend has it he played hide and seek in Andy Warhol's Brillo boxes.

Despite being surrounded by art, Zwirner studied music at NYU and played the drums in a jazz band before working in A&R for a record label. He quickly became disenchanted with the music business, and sold prints to museums from a rented minivan before launching his own gallery in 1993.

Early artists to join the gallery include Stan Douglas, Diana Thater, and Luc Tuymans, with more recent signings include Elizabeth Peyton, Michael Armitage, and Emma McIntyre. These days, Zwirner also represents several key estates, including those of Joan Mitchell, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Josef Albers, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

Zwirner has said the wind was at his back as an art dealer, with the number of galleries and collectors growing roughly tenfold from 1993 to 2013. Nevertheless, many galleries have fallen by the wayside over the decades, their declines hastened by the recession in 2008–2009 and the pandemic.

Zwirner's expansion to L.A. further cements the gallery's business and brand, though for Griffin it hasn't yet elevated the local art scene.

'A number of blue chip galleries have pitched up in Los Angeles over the past decade or so, and very few have—individually at least—made a splash,' he said.

'What has changed is that the more galleries open outposts in L.A., the more all the others feel they have to have a foothold out there too. Consequently the whole landscape has changed, but since there is so much overlap between their programmes, no one gallery has had that much impact on the scene.' —[O]