Mayor Gallery Explained
The Mayor Gallery is an art gallery located on Bury Street, London, England. Since its foundation by Fred Mayor in partnership with Douglas Cooper in 1925, it has promoted modern and contemporary art.[1] [2] Since the early 1970s, under the new impulse given by James Mayor, Fred Mayor's son, the Gallery started to focus actively on the work of contemporary American artists from the Pop art movement but also Conceptual art and Abstract expressionism such as Eva Hesse, Roy Lichtenstein, Agnes Martin, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Ryman, Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol. More recently, taking further its interest for Minimal art and Dada, the Gallery has been promoting artists of the international Zero (art) movement, including Heinz Mack, Otto Piene amongst others.[3]
History
The Mayor Gallery opened in 1925 at 37 Sackville Street. The gallery closed in 1926, and reopened in 1933 at 18 Cork Street, in an area regarded as the historic art district of London.[4] Many foreign artists were exhibited for the very first time in England at the Mayor Gallery including major ones such as Alexander Calder and Paul Klee. In its early years the Mayor Gallery was also instrumental to the creation of Unit One,[5] a British group formed by the painter Paul Nash in 1933 with fellow artists Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Edward Wadsworth, Edward Burra and others to promote Modern art, architecture and design.
The German Jewish refugee art dealer Alfred Flechtheim worked for the Mayor Gallery after his art gallery was Aryanized by Nazis in Germany.[6] Flechtheim' gallery records were left with Mayor but were destroyed.[7] [8] [9] [10]
Notes and References
- Web site: artnet Asks: James Mayor. September 10, 2014. Artnet News.
- Web site: Mayor Gallery Artist Biographies. live. https://web.archive.org/web/20210108155412/https://www.artbiogs.co.uk/2/galleries/mayor-gallery. 2021-01-08. 2021-01-08. www.artbiogs.co.uk.
- Web site: A London Show Reveals Lesser-Known Works by Group Zero Pioneers Heinz Mack, Otto Piene, and Günther Uecker. June 12, 2015. Artsy.
- Web site: Cork Street Uncorked: John Dunbar in conversation with James Mayor. Cork Street Galleries.
- Herbert Read (ed.) (1934) Unit One: the modern movement in English architecture, painting and sculpture. London: Cassell
- Web site: Alfred Flechtheim - The Metropolitan Museum of Art . 2024-11-16 . www.metmuseum.org . fr.
- Web site: Archives Directory for the History of Collecting . 2024-11-16 . research.frick.org . en . At his death, Flechtheim left his gallery records and personal library (now destroyed) with Fred Mayor, founder of Mayor Gallery..
- Web site: Artist Info . 2024-11-16 . www.nga.gov.
- Ivanoff . Hélène . 2015-04-14 . Ottfried Dascher, « Es ist was Wahnsinniges mit der Kunst » : Alfred Flechtheim. Sammler, Kunsthändler, Verleger . Revue de l'Institut français d'histoire en Allemagne . 10.4000/ifha.8190 . 2190-0078.
- Web site: 2018-10-29 . Two Expressionist Masterworks Restituted to the Heirs of Collector, Dealer and Bon Vivant Alfred Flechtheim . 2024-11-16 . Sothebys.com . en . Alfred Flechtheim’s hope was to relocate to Paris or New York with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler or Paul Rosenberg but in December 1933 he moved to London and worked with the Mayor Gallery. From 1934 he represented Kahnweiler’s Galerie Simon in London and desperately went back and forth to Paris to make a living. In London he organized exhibitions of works by Picasso, Gris, Léger and Marie Laurencin and up until 1936 he managed to enter and leave Nazi Germany on several occasions at great personal risk to see his wife Betty who has stayed in Berlin because she was unable to pay Jewish ‘flight tax.’.
