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| Galerie Eigen + Art | |
|---|---|
| Name | Galerie Eigen + Art |
| Established | 1983 |
| Location | Leipzig; Berlin |
| Type | Art gallery |
Galerie Eigen + Art is a contemporary art gallery founded in 1983 that played a formative role in the postwar and post-reunification art scenes of Leipzig and Berlin. The gallery is noted for championing abstract painting, drawing, and multimedia practices while building a program that intersects with museums, biennials, and academic institutions across Europe and North America. Its activities encompass exhibition-making, publishing, and partnerships with artists associated with movements from Neo-Expressionism to contemporary abstraction.
The gallery opened amid the cultural landscape of the German Democratic Republic alongside institutions such as the Leipzig School and countercultural venues linked to figures like A. R. Penck and Werner Tübke. During the late 1980s and early 1990s it engaged with the transformations associated with the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the German reunification, and a growing international market shaped by collectors and curators connected to Christie's, Sotheby's, and museum directors from the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. In the 1990s and 2000s the gallery expanded networks to include curators and critics active at the Tate Modern, Museum of Modern Art, and the Centre Pompidou, while exhibiting artists whose work entered collections of the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Operating primary spaces in Leipzig and Berlin, the gallery has occupied industrial and loft-style venues reminiscent of exhibition spaces used by dOCUMENTA and warehouses repurposed in the manner of galleries near Kreuzberg and Mitte. Its Leipzig gallery aligns with the city's institutions such as the Museum der bildenden Künste and the Halle (Saale) region’s art scene, while the Berlin location situates it among contemporary galleries near landmarks like the Hamburger Bahnhof and the Berliner Ensemble. The spatial strategies recall site-specific approaches employed at the Venice Biennale, the Rotterdamse Kunsthal, and private foundations such as the Kunsthalle zu Kiel.
The roster has included artists connected with the New Leipzig School, adjacent generations of painters, and international practitioners invited from centers like New York City, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Tokyo. Exhibitions have showcased names with affinities to Neo-Expressionism, Minimalism, and contemporary drawing practices akin to work by artists associated with Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, and younger contemporaries who have shown in venues such as the Serpentine Galleries and the Hayward Gallery. The program has featured solo and group shows resonant with curatorial projects at the Berlin Biennale, the Skulptur Projekte Münster, and the Biennale de Lyon.
Programming emphasizes painting, drawing, and cross-disciplinary projects that dialogue with historical movements represented in collections at the Neue Nationalgalerie and the Städel Museum. The gallery's curatorial model has paralleled initiatives by curators from the Documenta team and the Kunstverein Hannover, balancing market-facing exhibitions with scholarly presentations that reference archives and estates such as those of Joseph Beuys, Wassily Kandinsky, and contemporaneous estates shown at institutions like the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Eigen + Art has produced catalogues, artist monographs, and essays collaborating with editors and authors active at publishers connected to exhibition cataloguing used by the Nationalgalerie, the Schaulager, and university presses linked to the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the Universität Leipzig. Collaborative projects have involved partnerships with curators and institutions such as the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, the Kunsthalle Basel, university galleries at Columbia University and Goldsmiths, University of London, and art fairs including Art Basel, Frieze, and TEFAF.
Critics from outlets and institutions including the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the New York Times, and curators from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum have positioned the gallery as influential in promoting artists later included in public collections like the British Museum and the National Gallery of Art. Its role in the careers of practitioners connected to the New Leipzig School and its participation in international fairs and biennials have linked it to broader narratives involving private collectors, foundation support from entities like the Kunststiftung NRW, and exhibition strategies emulated by younger galleries in Berlin and Leipzig.
Category:Contemporary art galleries Category:Art museums and galleries in Germany