Art galleryGagosian
The largest gallery in the world, with spaces on three continents and exhibitions of a kind once left to museums.
- Founded
- 1980, Los Angeles
- Founded by
- Larry Gagosian
- Run from
- New York
- Spaces in
- 9 cities
- Highest reported sale
- $7 million
The gallery
Larry Gagosian began by selling posters on a pavement in Los Angeles in the 1970s. He opened a gallery there in 1980 and moved into New York in the middle of the decade, where he made his name reselling major works by artists other dealers represented, quickly and at high prices. The method earned him the nickname Go-Go.
From that base he built the model of the global gallery. Gagosian opened in London in 2000 and then, one city after another, in Rome, Athens, Paris, Geneva and Hong Kong, with a hangar-sized space at Le Bourget airport outside Paris for works too large for anywhere else. It now has around nineteen exhibition spaces, more than any other gallery.
Its exhibitions of historical art, of Picasso above all, have borrowed from museums and drawn museum crowds, without charging for entry. The gallery rarely announces its sales, which is why so few appear below.
Reported sales
- Peter Paul RubensA painting$7 millionArt Basel Paris 2025
- Willem de KooningUntitled, 1984A high seven-figure sumArt Basel 2026
Prices as the gallery reported them from its stand at the fair named. They are the seller's figures, usually the asking price, and cannot be checked.
Artists and estates
- Cy Twombly
- Richard Serra
- Jeff Koons
- Damien Hirst
- Takashi Murakami
- Jenny Saville
- Anselm Kiefer
- Ed Ruscha
- John Currin
- Rachel Whiteread
- Theaster Gates
- Urs Fischer
- Richard Prince
- Albert Oehlen
- Stanley Whitney
- Helen Frankenthaler
- Roy Lichtenstein
- Willem de Kooning
A selection. Rosters change, and the gallery's own site has the full list.
Milestones
- 1980The first gallery opens in Los Angeles.
- 1989A gallery opens at 980 Madison Avenue, New York, which becomes the headquarters.
- 1999The move to Chelsea, on West 24th Street.
- 2000London: the first gallery outside the United States.
- 2010Paris opens with paintings by Cy Twombly.
- 2011Hong Kong: the first permanent space in Asia.