Zwemmer Gallery

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From left to right: Stanley William Hayter, unknown, Anton Zwemmer, René d'Harnoncourt,
during the exhibition "Henry Moore" at the Museum of Modern Art , New York, July 1946.
Photo: Henry Moore Foundation Archive
Link to the picture
(please note copyrights )

The Zwemmer Gallery was an art bookstore founded in 1922 by Anton Zwemmer (1892–1979) in London on 72–80 Charing Cross Road . In 1929 he founded a gallery at 26 Litchfield Street just around the corner from Charing Cross Road .

Life

Zwemmer was the eldest son of Arie and Baukje Huizinga Zwemmer. At the age of 14 he left the Christian elementary school and finished his education first with the publisher Herman Tjeenk Willink in Haarlem. After a short time he changed HN Mul's company, which specialized in music and book sales, and learned the basics of the book trade. In January 1911 he was called up for military service , which was to begin in January of the following year. Due to a certain electoral process of the Dutch army, which did not enable only a small number of recruits not to serve, Zwemmer succeeded in not having to serve as a soldier in World War II .

In 1912 Zwemmer left Haarlem and moved to Amsterdam, where he was employed as an assistant at Kirberger & Kesper, a company specializing in English literature , for which he traveled to England that same year. Here he came into contact with Simpkin Marshall, a leading British book wholesaler, and other publishers.

Bookstore and gallery

Anton Zwemmer moved to London in 1914. After working for Simpkin Marshall for a short period of time, he moved to Harrods to take on the management of the local bookstore. In 1922 he bought a bookstore on Charing Cross Road from his employer Richard Jäschke, which subsequently served as a place for art and modern literature. As one of the few locations in London where art publications were available, the bookstore became an important meeting point for art lovers and served as a distributor of many foreign mainstream, avant-garde and academic art publications, such as Cahiers d'Art , XXe siècle , Jugend and das Burlington Magazine .

Bookstore

From 1925, Zwemmer published original titles on art and architecture , artist books and the series Studies in Architecture . He also published in collaboration with European and American partners, including Gualtiero di San Lazarro ( Editions des Chroniques du Jour ), the American publisher Erhard Weyhe and the German publisher Ernst Wasmuth . When in 1929 the publication of the Urformen der Kunst by Karl Blossfeldt appeared in the publishing house of Ernst Wasmuth , it was published by Albert Zwemmer under the title Art Forms in Nature . Zwemmer also contributed to the magazines Minotaure published by the Swiss publisher Albert Skira and Tériade in Paris . From 1937 he participated in the artist magazine Verve and in 1944 in its successor Labyrinthe .

gallery

In 1929 he opened his gallery at 26 Litchfield Street, which was originally intended as an exhibition space for high-quality color art reproductions to be sold in the bookstore. However, this purpose was soon abandoned when Zwemmer began showing original works by British and international artists. The gallery owner, not associated with any particular movement or artistic direction, promoted a wide range of modern art , including works by Henri Matisse , Henry Moore , Pablo Picasso , Jacob Epstein , Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and Paul Nash .

Meeting with Albert Skira

Albert Zwemmer received book orders from the National Art Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum at regular intervals . He ordered an edition of the print Ovide, Les Métamorphoses , 1931 by Pablo Picasso, published by Albert Skira , in advance . Since Zwemmer was the only one who ordered in advance from Skira, he was so excited that he spontaneously went to London to meet Zwemmer. Since then, both have become close friends and business partners. Zwemmer became the agent for Skira's books in the UK.

Exhibitions

Fred Uhlman at Zwemmer, 1938

In 1933 and 1936 Zwemmer showed watercolors by Eric Ravilious in two solo exhibitions , and in that year and the following year he exhibited Picasso in two exhibitions. The first comprised 57 paintings and works on paper covering the artist's entire creative period, including examples of analytical and synthetic cubism , the second exhibition in 1937 was dedicated to Picasso and Giorgio de Chirico . In 1938 the gallery showed works by Fred Uhlman . Zwemmer also held several surrealist exhibitions, including one for Joan Miró and the first solo show for Salvador Dalí in the UK. He also exhibited and sold Cubist works by Juan Gris , including The Sunblind from 1914 ( Tate Modern , London) and Cup, Glasses and Bottle (Le Journal) , 1914 ( Metropolitan Museum of Art ), some of which were by major collectors such as René Gaffé and Heinrich Gottlieb Reber came.

In the 1940s, Zwemmer made joint purchases with the Lefèvre Gallery and Marlborough Fine Arts. Customers have included many well-known British and American modern art collectors, including Kenneth Clark , Douglas Cooper , Albert Gallatin, Roland Penrose , Sir Michael Sadler and Peter Watson .

End of the gallery

The gallery was closed for the duration of World War II . In 1947, after reopening, the focus shifted from the international avant-garde to emerging British artists, including Alistair Grant and Peter Coker. During this time, Zwemmer's sons, John and Desmond Zwemmer, ran the family business together with their father, which was transferred to A. Zwemmer Ltd. in 1949 . was renamed. This year published Zwemmer, in collaboration with Skira, the two-volume English translation of André Malraux's Psychology de l'Art ( The Psychology of Art ), the 65 photogravures contained various sizes and 21 color illustrations. In the 1960s, the company partnered with Oxford University Press and Lund Humphries Publishing.

Michael Chase ran the gallery between 1954 and 1965 and closed it shortly after his departure in 1968. In September 1983 the publisher moved to 24 Litchfield Street. Two years later the company was sold to the publisher Philip Wilson (Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd.). The complete archive of the Zwemmer Gallery is housed in the Tate Gallery Archives, London.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Chloe Rendall: Zwemmers , modernistarchives.com.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h Anna Jozefacka: Zwemmer, Gallery . London. 1929-1968 , Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  3. ↑ a b c Jane Carlin: Anton Zwemmer: London's Bookseller and Publisher for the Arts , Book Club of Washington, Fall 2012; Vol. 12; No. 2, p. 37, soundideas.pugetsound.edu, (PDF).
  4. ↑ a b Jane Carlin: Anton Zwemmer: London's Bookseller and Publisher for the Arts , p. 41.
  5. ↑ Jane Carlin, p. 40.
  6. ^ Freda Constable / Sue Simon: The England of Eric Ravilious . Scolar Press, London 1982, p. 11
  7. ^ The Making of An Englishman: Fred Uhlman, A Retrospective, Press Release, November 13, 2017 , Burgh House & Hampstead Museum, London.
  8. ↑ Jane Carlin, p. 42.
  9. ^ Zwemmer Gallery (Biographical details) , British Museum .