Stable Gallery

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The Stable Gallery was an art gallery in New York . It was founded in 1953 by Eleanor Ward . In the 1950s and 60s, the gallery was an important exhibition space and meeting point for numerous renowned artists of American modernism. In 1962 Robert Indiana’s first solo exhibition took place here , and in the same year Andy Warhol presented his first Pop Art pictures in the gallery.

history

The Stable Gallery was originally located in a former stable building on 58th Street in Manhattan and was named after the building's previous use. Initially, the gallery sold mannequins and displayed fashion photographs . Eleanor Ward (1911–1984), who had started her career in the fashion industry as assistant to Christian Dior , quickly received support. As a kind of " homage " to the groundbreaking 9th Street Art Exhibition of 1951, the Stable Gallery showed works by well-known Abstract Expressionists such as Philip Guston , Franz Kline , Willem de Kooning , Knox Martin, Robert Motherwell , Jackson Pollock , from 1953 to 1957 . Robert Rauschenberg , Ad Reinhardt and Jack Tworkov . This very successful annual exhibition event soon became known in art circles as the "Stable Annual". As the first and second generation of Abstract Expressionists took new directions and Pop Art became dominant, Ward expanded the gallery and brought together artists from various art styles in exhibitions, such as Joseph Cornell , Edward Dugmore, John Ferren, Ian Hornak, Lowell Nesbitt, Conrad Marca-Relli , Joan Mitchell , Isamu Noguchi , Larry Rivers , Richard Stankiewicz, Cy Twombly , Jack Tworkov and Wilfred Zogbaum. With this mixed exhibition concept, Eleanor Ward made the Stable Gallery an attractive meeting place for the emerging and established artists of their time.

In 1960 Eleanor Ward moved the gallery to a townhouse at 33 East 74th Street. The new rooms offered more space and Ward moved into the rooms on the upper floor of the gallery. During the 1960s, new artists such as Alex Katz , Robert Indiana , the figurative sculptor Marisol, and Andy Warhol were added. After differences with her “draft horse” Alex Katz, Ward gave the newcomer Warhol the chance in 1962 to show his new work in November, the “best month” of New York gallery owners. On November 6, 1962, for example, the Stable Gallery presented its first exhibition of Warhol's Pop Art screen prints . In the same year Robert Indiana had his first solo exhibition in New York here. In 1964, Warhol's sensational Brillo Box exhibition followed, at which Warhol briefly transformed the gallery into a “pop art storage room”. The show, which was reviewed by numerous critics, immensely consolidated Warhol's artistic reputation. Shortly thereafter, Ward and Warhol fell out due to financial disagreements.

In 1970 Eleanor Ward unexpectedly closed the Stable Gallery. According to her own statement, with increasing commercialization she had lost interest in contemporary art and preferred to devote herself to the work as a private art expert instead of running a gallery that was only business instead of passion. Eleanor Ward died in January 1984.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ David Bourdon: Warhol . DuMont, Cologne 1989, ISBN 3-7701-2338-7 , pp. 130, 188.
  2. ↑ Bourdon: Warhol , p. 404
  3. ↑ Grace Glueck: Eleanor Ward is dead at 72. The New York Times , January 7, 1984, accessed December 30, 2008 .