Kootz Gallery

Kootz Gallery Kootz Gallery was a New York City commercial art gallery active from 1945 to 1966 that played a pivotal role in promoting modern art in the United States. The gallery fostered relationships among artists, critics, curators, collectors and institutions, mounting exhibitions that connected European avant-garde figures with American painters and sculptors. Its program intersected with major movements and personalities across mid‑20th century art, shaping museum acquisitions, critical debates, and transatlantic exchanges.

History

Samuel Kootz, an art dealer and patron, established a program that linked exhibitions and publications involving a constellation of figures, collectors and institutions. The gallery entered networks that included curators at the Museum of Modern Art, dealers such as Pierre Matisse and Alex Maguire, critics like Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, and collectors including Peggy Guggenheim, Nelson Rockefeller, Irving Stenn, and Joseph Hirshhorn. Exhibition exchanges and loans brought together works by artists associated with Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, Stuart Davis, Joan Mitchell, Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Roberto Matta, Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, and Barnett Newman.

Founding and Early Years

The gallery’s founding followed Kootz’s prior activity as a writer and promoter who had engaged with figures from the European avant‑garde and American scene. Early shows juxtaposed works by émigré artists and Americans, creating dialogues between names such as André Masson, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Kurt Schwitters, Fernand Léger, Georges Braque, Raoul Dufy, Edvard Munch, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and John Marin. Kootz collaborated with curators and publishers tied to institutions like the Whitney Museum of American Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Phillips Collection, Carnegie Museum of Art, and Brooklyn Museum, facilitating loans and catalogues that connected collectors such as Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and Albert Barnes to contemporary painters and sculptors.

Artists and Exhibitions

Kootz mounted solo and group exhibitions by a broad roster of artists, organizing shows that included works by Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Barnett Newman, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb, Clyfford Still, Joan Mitchell, Philip Guston, Hans Hofmann, David Smith, Alberto Giacometti, Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, Jean Dubuffet, Roberto Matta, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, Isamu Noguchi, Giacomo Manzu, Alberto Burri, Yves Tanguy, and Helen Levitt. The gallery’s catalogues, lectures and salon‑style openings attracted critics and curators including Harold Rosenberg, Clement Greenberg, Rosalind Krauss, Thomas Hess, Barbara Rose, and Dore Ashton, while prominent collectors such as Peggy Guggenheim, James Thrall Soby, S.I. Newhouse, Saul Steinberg, Gertrude Stein, Nelson Rockefeller, Mr and Mrs. Paul Mellon, and Joseph Hirshhorn acquired works. Kootz also introduced younger or lesser‑known painters and sculptors who later entered museum collections at institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, and Centre Pompidou.

Influence on Abstract Expressionism

The gallery’s exhibition program and publications helped shape critical and market recognition of Abstract Expressionism, connecting practitioners with critics, collectors and curators. By juxtaposing European modernists—Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky—with American figures such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Barnett Newman, and Robert Motherwell, Kootz contributed to debates advanced by Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg and to institutional acquisitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. The gallery functioned alongside venues and actors including Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery, Pierre Matisse Gallery, Catherine Viviano Gallery, Julien Levy Gallery, Knoedler Gallery, Sidney Janis Gallery, Leo Castelli Gallery, and publications such as ARTnews and The New York Times, amplifying reputations and shaping historiography.

Closure and Legacy

The gallery closed in the mid‑1960s, but its influence persisted through works entering major collections, scholarly literature, and exhibition histories. Artists promoted by the gallery continued to be the subject of retrospectives at institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate Britain, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, National Gallery of Art, and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Dealers, curators and historians such as Leo Castelli, Pierre Matisse, Thomas Naumann, Harold Rosenberg, Clement Greenberg, and Hilton Kramer cited Kootz exhibitions in catalogues and essays, and many works once shown at the gallery are now held in collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, Guggenheim Museum, and National Gallery of Art. The gallery’s model of transatlantic programming and critical engagement remains a reference point for commercial galleries and museums engaging with mid‑century modernism.

Category:Art galleries in New York City