Veteran French Gallerist Daniel Lelong Has Died at 92

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Galerie Lelong founding partner Daniel Lelong died in hospital on Wednesday morning after a period of illness.

His gallery confirmed Lelong had died at the age of 92, saying that all who have known him will remember him as a ‘warm and unfailingly positive person’.

‘[We owe] him an immense debt,’ they said, adding they plan to ‘carry on his inspiring spirit’ across their locations in Paris and New York.

Galerie Lelong partner and vice president Mary Sabbatino spoke of Lelong’s commitment to art and artists. He was an art dealer ‘from a different time’, she told Artnews, recalling his presence at the first Art Basel in 1970. 

‘The people who lived through that, who are alive, are very few,’ she said.

Sabbatino remembered Lelong as an optimistic person who ‘really liked artists’, ‘people’, and ‘life’. 

‘It infiltrated every way he ran the gallery,’ she said, emphasising his interest in building the primary market of gallery artists like Joan Miró and Alexander Calder.

A former lawyer and civil servant, the Nancy-born gallerist came to art through French dealer Aimé Maeght, for whom he helped create the legal status of France’s first private art foundation. 

Lelong later joined Maeght’s gallery in 1964, working on administration and exhibitions for Miró and Calder, in addition to artists like Francis Bacon, Alberto Giacometti, and Marc Chagall. 

When Maeght died in 1981, Lelong stepped in as co-director alongside Jean Frémon and Jacques Dupin. In 1987, they renamed the gallery Lelong & Co.

Frémon, who worked with Lelong for 50 years, also spoke of the retired dealer’s warm and optimistic character. —[O]