Max Hetzler, 41 Dover Street, London W1S 4NS
www.maxhetzler.com Instagram: @galeriemaxhetzler
Galerie Max Hetzler opened in Stuttgart in 1974, bringing the emerging Germans of the time – Albert Oehlen, Günther Förg and Martin Kippenberger – plus international peers to the south German city. The gallery has moved round a lot, becoming more fully established in Cologne, then the art capital of West Germany, in the 1980’s, switching to Berlin in 1993. Now Hetzler represents over sixty artists across seven spaces: four in Berlin (I can verify that surprising number, having visited them all), plus Paris and Marfa as well as the London space.
That opened in 2018, led by Hetzler’s son Max Edouard Hetzler and Senior Director Sarah Horner. It is relatively modestly placed on the first floor, in substantial rooms but far from the scale of the vast Potsdamer Straße location. According to Hetzler himself ‘The programme is the artists’, which I guess puts the emphasis on which artists are chosen, and the quality is high. London opened with André Butzer, and he returns this October. My highlights from the years in between have been Thomas Struth’s photographs taken at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) and other solo shows by Navid Nuur, Louise Bonnet and Robert Holyhead; Albert Oehlen and Carroll Dunham jointly; and retrospective celebrations of Raymond Hains, Günther Förg and Karel Appel. You can currently see fourteen flower paintings by Grace Weaver, big enough for them to be people dancing – an effect enhanced by the bouquets having no visible means of support, such as the expected vase.
London’s gallery scene is varied, from small artist-run spaces to major institutions and everything in between. Each week, art writer and curator Paul Carey-Kent gives a personal view of a space worth visiting.
